A branch falls into the flow.
Materials accumulate.
Dead leaves
more sticks
carbon fixed from past seasons
A death.
Grief.
Various slights and disappointments.
Flotsam and a plastic bag, rivulets rippling in their wake.
Creatures carried by the flow
attach.
Beasts and naiads,
with mandibles and gills and egg sacs.
Microscopic cells and colonies and filaments.
Shredders, scrapers, chewers, immobilizers,
and growers.
Filtering and transforming and creating
new wastes.
—
Lauren Kinsman-Costello is an ecosystem ecologist, mud enthusiast, and Associate Professor at Kent State University. She lives and works in the wetlands of Ohio with her husband, two daughters, dog, a variable number of chickens, and two guinea pigs, but her roots are in Michigan.
