Joseph Hutchison

ON THE RIVER’S SLATE

These scrawls and smudges
on the black chalkboard water
are signs of things invisible:

sunken sandbars, beer cans,
rocks, tree trunks whose roots
a crumbling bank let go of,
fin-work of cutthroat and brown,

and wind, of course—wind
that blurs, combs, dimples,
sweeping simplicities away.
Still, the current makes

one clear argument, woven
of volume and degree of slope;
the surface effects—all style:
allusions, footnotes, marginalia.

“What the river says,” the cunning
poet wrote, “that is what I say.”

Seems innocent, doesn’t it.

Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate (2014-2019), has published 19 poetry collections, including The World As Is: New and Selected Poems, 1972-2015; Marked Men; and Bed of Coals (Colorado Poetry Award winner). His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in many anthologies and over 100 journals, including Agni Review, Cutthroat, Kentucky Review, Pedestal Magazine, Poetry (Chicago), and Poetry Salzburg Review. He directs the Professional Creative Writing program at the University of Denver’s University College. Full Profile

Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate (2014-2019), has published 19 poetry collections, including The World As Is: New & Selected Poems, 1972-2015, Marked Men, and the narrative sequence Bed of Coals. His poems have appeared in over 100 journals—including Agni Review, American Poetry Review, Pedestal Magazine, Poetry (Chicago), and Poetry Salzburg Review—and in numerous anthologies, including New Poets of the American West and A Ritual to Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford... Full Profile