Tag Archives Illinois River

I  was invited to go power boating

on the Illinois River on Labor Day.

My elderly hosts were retired.

He had been a builder, she a teacher –

caring folk looking out for a stranger.

They had Scottish ancestry, they told me,

and confessed, laughing, that they had spent

the previous night imbibing Drambuie.

We spoke warmly of the water of life.

‘But no drinking on board!’ they chorused.

Old Glory hung limply in their yard

in the soupy Mid-West September air.