Muskrat Meditation
Sunday morning,
damp bench,
Deep Creek Lake State Park.
Pandemic pup
sits beside me,
panting after her free run,
hitched up when the ranger
arrived.
My meditative moment,
the lake’s tranquility
are disrupted by a furry head,
traveling north along the shoreline.
Muskrat? Beaver?
I’m reminded again
of my ignorance,
wildlife, flora, fauna.
We follow the rodent,
diving under,
then resurfacing a surprising
distance toward the lake’s
public boat launch.
Our grassy path
ends abruptly at the rip rap.
The rodent veers out to
deeper waters.
Driving home,
we encounter a lone deer
atop the Cherry Creek Bridge,
dynamited during
the 1970 roads workers’ strike.
On Rock Lodge Road,
I pass the foundation of a new home.
It sits atop the site of my friend Doug’s place,
a stone house, built by his family,
owners of the Stone Cottages,
made famous in 1953,
after a CIA agent slipped LSD
to a man who jumped to his death in NYC.
Their Stone Tavern, taken by eminent domain
to build a bridge.
Doug said he hated what had become of
the Lake.
He died, soon after selling the home,
now just another “tear-down,”
moving to Frostburg.
Diabetes or depression?
We don’t know.
At home, I search “Muskrat or Beaver?”
I make my call.
And I wonder how life has changed for the
muskrat, along this lake,
this once fertile farmland,
creeks and valleys
flooded in 1925 for electric power.
Now a playground of the powerful.
Would the rodent
share Doug’s regrets,
swimming past the foundation
occupying the site of the sturdy
stone house,
the place Doug once called
Home?
Len Shindel began working at Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point Plant in 1973, where he was a union activist and elected representative in local unions of the United Steelworkers, frequently publishing newsletters about issues confronting his co-workers. His nonfiction and poetry have been published in the “Other Voices” section of the Baltimore Evening Sun, The Pearl, The Mill Hunk Herald, Pig Iron, Labor Notes and other publications. After leaving Sparrows Point in 2002, Shindel, a father of three and grandfather of seven, began working as a communication specialist for an international union based in Washington, D.C. The International Labor Communications Association frequently rewarded his writing. He retired in 2016. Today he enjoys writing, cross-country skiing, kayaking, hiking, fly-fishing, and fighting for a more peaceful, sustainable and safe world for his grandchildren and their generation. Shindel is currently working on a book about the Garrett County Roads Workers Strike of 1970 www.garrettroadstrike.com.