River Walk in Winter

Abstract

River Walk in Winter Kathleen Driskell (bio) For Claudia Emerson All is quiet here this morning.It's too cold and early for runners,though their kids are alreadyin yellow buses on the roads over therebeyond these woods. No one is walking a dog,yet, despite the wind, mostdogs would be here happily. In the year or so before she died,when able, she'd walk in a parkalong a path next to a river,somewhat like this,and try not to think about cellsdividing. And growing. So oddto think of growing as a negative.Especially now. In winter, I mean. She was loved again. And, she loved him. She loved dogs, too, but she grewso angry, she said (she needn't have,I heard the rage in her voice),when they came bounding towardher off their leashes, their ownerswalking casually behind, [End Page 30] expecting everyone to beas delighted as theythat they ownedsuch marvelous creatures. I feel compelled to defend her,to say again that she loved dogs. To make sure that you heard me. She loved all animals, really. (She loved the whole fucking world.) So maybe it was as those dogsbounded toward her, they made her realizejust how easily, then, she could be completelyknocked off her feetby what she loved. [End Page 31] Kathleen Driskell Kathleen Driskell is the Chair of Spalding University's School of Creative and Professional Writing, home of the nationally distinguished low-residency MFA in Writing Program in Louisville, Kentucky. She's the author of the poetry collections Blue Etiquette: Poems, a finalist for the Weatherford Award; Next Door to the Dead, a Kentucky Voices selection by the University Press of Kentucky and winner of the 2018 Judy Gaines Young Book Award; Seed Across Snow, a Poetry Foundation national bestseller; Laughing Sickness, and Peck and Pock: A Graphic Poem. Copyright © 2022 Berea College ...