jacob riyeff

Jacob Riyeff (@riyeff) is a translator, poet, and scholar of medieval literature. His work focuses on the western contemplative tradition, medieval vernacular poetry, and the natural world. His first poetry collection is Sunk in Your Shipwreck (Resource), and his latest book is The Saint Benedict Prayer Book (Paraclete). Jacob teaches in the English department at Marquette University and lives in Milwaukee's East Village.

the lower narrows

Baraboo, Wisconsin

the Baraboo with its steep banks 

lumbers thru your inviting limbs 

and she is born as we are born 

a passage of life and death, terrible 

and bountiful at once. i passed the Fox, 

the Rock and Crawfish, the broad Meskonsing 

to be here with you, here at the bottom 

of an ancient sea, dried up and haunting 

gate to a mountain range worn 

and worn by the years, by sand, by water 

worn. my grandparents lived here in your ring, 

one of them died here too, in earshot  

of your river. but the rain drives the fog  

over your bluffs and i place my hands  

on wet rhyolite’s ridges, hear  

the hillsides singing, raindrops falling  

into the swollen streams with their mournful 

music. and in this gorge you place 

my heart on your rocky altar, an offering   

burnt of childhood and dream, clear-eyed  

mortality and joy here in the narrows.  

here in your shadow where the dark grey  

of your sky teaches life itself,  

filling the hollows, the glens. i’ve driven  

down these roads glowing rose  

and you speak to me, my kids, just as  

you spoke to those before, vaunting  

stone and whelming water in your wisdom. 

Read Jacob’s work and more in Solum Journal Volume II.