~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Heather Dobbins

From the Egghead Engineer

May the river not thrash us all while I’m living.
There is nothing as hard to control as this Mississippi.
The bottom can’t be numbered. What I can and aim

to do. When she kisses me, she holds my jaw and temple.
Holding what others call my egghead, she says, You. You will make
something with this. I want all of this. And has for thirty years,

longer than our lives before we met. Sunned shoulders and arms reaching
for the supper pan, she says, Tell me what you’re figuring.
You know them builder men can’t understand you.

I tell her pine is strong enough for a levee. Willows are woven
into it—a mattress with stones that know how to sink anchored
by more and more intent. Two miles long, one of each side, they will

use from the river. She takes my hands, cleans the pencil off my nails,
the smudges that made inadequate numbers, words. The brush falls
in a bowl on her lap. The bubbles flatten. I kiss her neck. Her back

rises into my chest. The breath swells and swelters. Nothing on the river
smells like her. She says, Tell me more. Dust and grease and wash
make for poor talkers. Despite my schooling, my high marks, and all

these years and the Mississippi still angers me. We tried an 8-foot, then
a 13, but the Mississippi ate away at bottom, a fast current. A new
bottom, a scoured stream. All I can see are the bars from the outflows

at the delta. I am not the only one. The French dragged iron harrows
over them. A century after that, Army Corps dredged them with buckets.
We have always worked hard to tame the river. Harder will not help us.

What have decades and building taught me? I see trade opening up.
If I open up the river, our whole country will be healthier. My notebooks
are full, but bloated effort is not wealth. I keep drawing, dusting the wood bits

from my slacks. I draw parallel jetties seaward from the New Orleans mouth
to constrict for speed and depth. Scour instead of flood, river water going down
instead of out, harming the fertile floodplain. What is my thirty years to a river?

My wife thinks I have the answer. Open the mouth for what hasn’t been spoken.