Doug Ramspeck

The Old Boat

Because the river has no blood inside its body
but only birds that accompany its passage
with desultory blessings from the trees
that hug the banks on both sides, I sit
in the ancient boat of the body and close
my eyes, and rain sometimes falls in late
summer and every memory is a crossroads
and every current is a shrine and the years
come to seem like the sound of a saxophone
played in a distant subway tunnel
I visited once but can’t recall.

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Doug Ramspeck is the author of nine poetry collections, one collection of short stories and a novella. One recent book, Black Flowers, is published by LSU Press. Five books have received awards: Blur (Tenth Gate Prize), Distant Fires (Grayson Books Poetry Prize), The Owl That Carries Us Away (G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction), Original Bodies (Michael Waters Poetry Prize), Mechanical Fireflies (Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize) and Black Tupelo Country (John Ciardi Prize for Poetry). Individual poems have appeared in journals that include The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Slate and The Georgia Review. He is a three-time recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award.