by S.D. Lishan
At Mingo park, at the site of what used to be called Pluggy’s town, a village in the 1700’s made up of displaced Iroquois called Mingo, as well as Mohawk, Wyandot, Shawnee, and Delaware, many of them refugees from white settlers in the east, and led by a fierce Mohawk warrior named Plukkemehnotee, but whom the settlers called simply “Pluggy,” one can see, on winter mornings, hundreds of gulls plucking minnows from the river where it makes its wide bend to the south.
The grey and white birds circle the river, swooping down with their clawed feet to stun the minnows feeding at the water’s surface. They pluck them out with their beaks and fly away rising into the cold morning, until they circle round and swoop in low again.
Over and over they do this, a ballet of wing and claw and beak. The water seems to boil to a froth. Farther up in the grey lightening sky, arrowhead-shaped flocks of geese fly south from northern Canada, only reaching Ohio now, in the depth of winter. The gulls ignore them, as do the ghosts of villagers past.
S.D. Lishan’s poems, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in journals such as Kenyon Review, New England Review, and Creative Nonfiction, and have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. His poetry collection, Body Tapestries, was published by Dream Horse Press (2006).