by Sandy Longhorn

~Mammoth Spring State Park, 19 October 2023

They make you wait, the trail

designers. Send you from the visitor’s center

to circle the lake counter-clockwise,

counting 15 stops on the interpretive

guide. You start steeped in history

with the remains of a bridge abutment

on the bank of the lake spread out

before you, covered in cattails and lime green

duckweed, a gaggle of Canada geese.

Farther on there’s the dam and the depot,

both relics now, unused and museumed.

After circling the shaded path

you come, finally, to stand at Mammoth Spring,

10th largest in the world, a worthy fame

bubbling up layered over by deep water

that becomes the Spring River, lined farther down

by fly fishers angling for hatchery bred

champion trout. The rupture in the earth’s crust

beneath you, measures 70 feet down

to the network of limestone channels,

waterways carved in the dark, and the signs say,

the spring appears clear and pure, it is not!

The signs tell of the natural compression,

concentration of too much nitrogen and oxygen,

the additional waste and chemicals picked up

from the surface before the water fell deep

through the clay of Missouri and percolated

to form this brilliant, near turquoise,

semi-toxic blue. Only the dam and the rapids

save the water, aerated in the tumbling over,

white water like fisted fingers unfurling,

releasing all that was once poised to kill.

Sandy Longhorn is the author of three books of poetry, most recently The Alchemy of My Mortal Form. Her poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, North American Review, Oxford American, and elsewhere. Longhorn teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Central Arkansas.