David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

The River's Pulse: Fifty-Two Haiku Weeks Along the Farmington (part 10: December)

December
atomized on rocks
the falls spray an icy haze—
veils of frozen breath

snow coats banks and trees
whitening ledge and sandbar—
the black chasm rolls

dark descends quickly
while water gathers luster—
twilight slowly drowns

ground-glass ice glistens
with current curdled to slush—
night’s frigid thumbprints

A couple blocks from my home, the Farmington River is the largest tributary of the Connecticut.  From Tinker's Damn, Homebound Publications, 2013,http://homeboundpublications.com/store/books/tinkers-damn/

At the Confluence of Nature & Invention: Canals

I often walk alongside canals threading through Collinsville’s old axe factory near my Connecticut home.  Fed by a Farmington River dam, the water can be dark and placid or rushing through gates, conduits and beneath buildings where it once turned wheels and turbines powering manufacturing.  Unkempt with vegetation, years of neglect yield a ragged, sublime beauty.

While man-made waterways often induce thoughts of Venice’s gondoliers or the Panamanian isthmus, such artificial rivers have quietly served may state and many others from the Republic’s early days though the nuclear age.  They often remain used and useful, objects of veneration, controversy and changing operations.

Origin of the Specious: An Ersatz Vermont Safari

I expected to see wildlife on a recent overnight to Vermont, but not a rhino bursting through the second story clapboards above an antique store.  Usually a trip to the Green Mountain State brings to mind bear,  moose, deer, raccoon, perhaps a secretive fisher cat.  Of course, I was in Burlington.  On a Friday night this college town might be awash with youthful animals of the featherless biped variety, especially after the bars close.  And considering it’s the city where presidential candidate Bernie Sanders once held sway as mayor, political animals might be on the prowl.  But no, it wasn’t these Homo sapiens subspecies that so startled me.