WE ARE SPREAD WIDE AS DELTA FANS

for Carol

.

one

I speak for the flooded river with a belly full of mud.

With roots inside the belly that like to coil

around the hairless ankles of a child,

to take him down under until he is born again in water

or learns to breathe in darkness.

I speak for the one I love, spread wide as a delta fan at the mouth of the river.

.

two

I sing for the river with pin oak trees washed away in heavy rainfall.

We are carried on our backs together with morning doves still nesting in the branches.

Carried until we meet a dam we cannot breach, without luck,

or without a kind of grace that can’t be bought and paid for.

The one I love is the Estuary where river and Gulf flood into one another.

.

three

There are wounds still sore after a thousand years,

pus filled and seeping,

that can only be healed by salt water in the Gulf.

But there is someone living inside us who cannot survive in the Gulf,

who cannot breathe in a wide expanse of water that tastes like tears,

even if they be tears of joy.

We swim until we grow too weak to hold back what we are made of.

Then we are washed away. Then we are gone.

.

four

I know only what I am told by the river and often not even that.

But you are the Estuary.

Your hair that once was gold is now a silver braid of moonlight.

You are river water and the Gulf, woven together.

As long as the One I love has a face, my face will be hers

and her face will also be hers.

.