May you tramp the Allegheny woods
under cumulus peaks.
Hear crickets and cicadas swell your
summer dusk.
May treed ridges glow copper, gold
and garnet in your fall.
Crayfish swim backward in your creek.
May your creek burble
into streams, plash into the Allegheny,
Ohio, Mississippi.
May their pearly mussel, longnose gar
and skipjack herring
numbers rebound. Their moisture rise,
form nimbus and quench
farmlands to feed you. May water piped
from river, reservoir or lake
flow through your tap. May you watch
cormorants and sea turtles
feast in the Gulf. Live to see the five oceans
form frazil, build
ice shelves. May your children’s fingers
trace cotton-candy dragons
in blue. Snow-globe flurries melt on their
pink tongues.
My lovely boys, may your passions help
to heal our careworn
Earth. Turn her woes into words in your
grandchildren’s history books.
—
Cora McCann Liderbach lives on the shores of Lake Erie in Lakewood, Ohio. Her poetry appears in Light Enters the Grove: Exploring Cuyahoga Valley National Park Through Poetry; Unbroken; Rockvale Review; The RavensPerch; Hole in the Head Review; Last Stanza Poetry Journal; and Crab Creek Review. Her chapbook, Throughline, has just been published by Finishing Line Press.
