In the Long Quiet

by Brock Schnurr

In the Long Quiet
by Brock Schnurr
 
The river comes down in a brown stagger,
shoulders hung with tin and glass,
a shutter clanging warning,
the mitten of some child in its teeth.

Yards lean toward the current,
the bank crumbling as if the water
remembered an old quarrel.
Across the bridge houses flake to bone,
rust ladders the doors,
rails drown in their beds.

Virtue came like weather—
an unseasonable warmth leaving the ground soft,
prints of strangers filling with melt.
They brought paper tongues,
hands faint with the scent of coins,
spoke in the register of promises
no one meant to keep.

We learned the trick of nodding
while the knife turned inward.
Nations die like that—
one winterless year at a time.

At night the lake grows a second ear,
cocked toward a shore that does not sleep.
Engines turn there in the dark,
slow and patient as a grindstone.

We face inland,
stack our mercies to the eaves,
tell ourselves the ice will hold.
But the thaw has begun—
and the river drags its catch toward us,
what we drowned ourselves to forget.

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Brock Eldon Schnurr earned his B.A. in English Literature from Western University and his M.A. from Queen’s University in Canada. He has taught English Language and Literature across Asia, including in South Korea, China, and Vietnam, where he currently resides in Hanoi. In addition to his teaching career, he serves as an editor for C2C Journal. His work has appeared internationally, with a forthcoming essay in Salmagundi and a poetry collection, Dominion Ashes: A Book of Decline, forthcoming from Ballerini Books Press. He is the author ofNull Point and The Commonplace Book on Substack.

John Elliott Woolford, “Montmorency River above the Great Fall, below the Three Falls.” c. 1819-1823.