Peter Markus's serene second poetry collection, The River at the End of the River, memorializes a lost father and celebrates the nature of the Detroit River region of Michigan.
These 91 free verse poems hymn the beauty of ordinary things. As "Praise Song in Search of Its Something" signals, a reverential attitude can render the everyday miraculous. The river and woods are sacred places for Markus (When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds). It's clear that he's happiest outside: walking with his dog, Moonshine, fishing from a small boat, throwing stones, watching birds, or just staring at the sky. He charts the turning of the seasons as the mud freezes and April brings unexpected snow. In a turbulent world, nature is a reliable comfort: "this is all we have left to fall back on,/ this small patch of earth holding us up."
Bereavement casts a shadow over the whole collection, which opens with the titular poem and closes with a reprise. The first line reads, "My father is waiting for me/ down at the river," a peaceful spot that his house overlooked. Although the poet still converses with his dead father and, eight years on, wishes he remembered his last words, he rejects sentimental symbolism; "an eagle is/ just an eagle. It's not my father/ returning to earth in the form of a bird." Instead, Markus realizes that "what is left of my father is what I carry/ inside me."
Death is inescapable here, even--or especially--in the natural world. Wildlife scampers all through the collection, while Markus dedicates several poems to dead animals he encounters on his tramps. Of a coyote, he writes, "Now it lives here in the afterlife/ of this poem. May it find a small bit of grace." Likewise, a heron "lives now in this poem where I can resurrect it/ with language and imagine how it used to fly."
The poetry swells with philosophical musings and rhetorical questions. Often, a phrase from one poem steals its way into the next. The moon is a rich source of metaphors. Allusions to Henry David Thoreau and Robert Frost place Markus in the tradition of thoughtful outdoorsmen. He prizes simplicity and admires the integrity of creatures who "only want to be what they are."
This calm collection battles grief but finds contentment in wildness. It's recommended to fans of the late Wendell Berry. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck
Shelf Talker: Michigan's wildlife and natural landscapes are a balm to Peter Markus, whose second poetry collection is a philosophical reckoning with the death of his father.