THE STRIPPING OF THE RIVER

By Edward Dorn

The continental tree supports the margins
In return for involuntary atrophos
Which can now be called the Shale Contract
Not only are the obvious labors
In metal and grain and fuel extracted
But the spiritual genius is so apt
To be cloven from this plain of our green heart
And to migrate to the neutralized
And individualizing conditions of the coasts
That this center of our true richness
Also goes there to aberrant rest
Bought by the silver of sunrise
And the gold of sunset.

in Edward Dorn, The Collected Poems 1956-1974 (Bolinas, CA: Four Seasons Foundation, 1975).

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Edward Dorn evoked and deconstructed the myths of the American West in poems such as "The Stripping of the River" and the book-length Gunslinger. In 1969 he was poet-in-residence at the University of Kansas, where his "Cosmology of Finding Your Place" lampooned the Lawrence hippie/biker scene. More of his poems can be found here.

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