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Zebra Mussels

Kevin Riley

I have returned to the winds and white caps
of my youth. Off shore gusts over 20 mph blow
from Lake Shore Drive and send our red
Tartan Ten heeling dramatically.

My father’s got big wind, blue skies and his middle
son at the tiller. A night game at Wrigley Field
in a few hours. A banner day for the retiring attorney.

Later, in the harbor, I dive off the boat
Into Lake Michigan. It is here that I birthed my love
for brief dips in icy cold water. This training prepared me
for the snow melt rivers and frigid Pacific Ocean of Oregon.

Unlike the murky soup that I grew up with, Chicago’s lake
Is now crystal clear. From shore it looks like Caribbean
turquoise. The flight of manufacturing and the Clean
Water Act helped. But the actual hero was the invasive Zebra Mussels.

Hitching a ride from Russian tankers, they cleaned
the water, but also clog pipes and foul the beaches.
A real mixed blessing.

Since fleeing to the West, I live among
snowy mountain peaks and moss-covered sea
stacks sitting off the rocky coast. I wallow
in the natural splendor and organize my life
around time sitting next to big trees.

But today I am stunned by the linear steel beauty
of the towers soaring out of downtown
Chicago, the place where the skyscraper was born.

These buildings seem an eager and optimistic gesture
towards a mutual, assured future and I swell
with pride for my species creating such elegant
improbabilities. At the same time, I weep
with the knowledge that our culture
has already created the end of its days.

On the coasts, storm surges are making cities unlivable. Out west, the
fires burn down entire towns in a few hours and choke the air
for millions. While here in Chicago, 62 people were shot
this weekend. The high temperature was thought to be a factor.
It will get hotter.

But for this moment, I am awed by the city and how people
from a thousand villages can live on top of one another. They
shop and dream and eat and die and make love and walk
their children to school amidst millions of other urban dwellers who look
different and believe very different things about the world.

It has always been an unlikely proposition, one made possible
only with deep courtesy and patience and deference and the assumption
that your neighbor is also merely trying to scratch his way through another day
and make it home in time to smooth his daughter’s hair with his callused hands
before she falls asleep.

We are capable of such heartbreaking beauty,
but the seeds of our descent were sown a long time ago.
Like the zebra mussels, we are a mixed blessing.

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