I was born in another language
in my mother's tongue
that flowed like the river around my childhood.
I was shore to sapphire and stones
in music of the accordions
and tailgate parties and night-time arguments.
I write in the currents.
Instead of a beginning, expect hidden sources
underground springs and cold streams.
Expect a brogue, a Finnish tongue.
I fell in her silences
in the sound of falling water.
There is a river between a girl and her mother,
two tongues of long rivers.
They rehearse the forces of reversals.
Rivers harness an awkward
onward, outward, neverness.
I learned to swim by drowning.
She was one way and I another
but followed in her shadow and flow.
Rivers talk in verse
and lead to the mouth.
I pour sentences into waves
that rise into crests and break,
roll like surf
grind down to syllables and vowels.
I swallow mist.
The river here and elsewhere
runs through toxic waste
and green organic matter
through the past into the future.
All the same, according to the river
erosion and accretion
migration and migration
now is the river and now and now and now.
St Louis River from the Iron Range
This is where I wade
oblivious to the drop off.
Nothing stops here. And her,
she bewilders. Wilder
for a moment, then idler.
Ice or vapor.
In the riverbank, frogs sleep.
As the ice breaks and sun makes mud,
the river pours past awakenings
broken stems, old grass, roots
fallen limbs, new sprouts.
The river erases
lifts the bottom to the top
sinks the surfaces around the bends
and through channels
down slopes in between
over boulder and rock,
over ledge and limitations.
Under this bridge and through that,
river pushes everything aside
and back into the confluence.
She travels through layers
through violence and its after-wash
through silence and sibilance
and distant acquaintance.
Rivers lie and never lie
remain awake while sleeping.
Rivers don't ask
what matters or if it does --
they're falling as they're falling
tangled and non-conforming
with gaps and circuits and junctures.
A birth in this world is a death in the other
a death in this world is a birth in the other.
If you are a child bearing a mother
or a mother bearing a child,
there is a vibration, a tone, an echo
broken in a place
St Louis River from the Iron Range
where broken finds new form
and new forms are broken.
Where one ends, another begins
over or underground.
What drives the river must be driven further.
Some say words don't matter,
not in short lines or longer.
Many texts have ground down
into stones, into fine sand,
and then the wind takes it further.
Rivers digress
speak many languages.
They are gospel, all possibility,
muddy and clear.
Every drop must merge and surge.
Can surging not be poetry?
The river is far-fetched
a lesson in ecstasy
with opposing forces, apostasy,
erotic urges. She was dancing
I was dying.
Currents must plunge
from stone and precipice
and take the breath.
Currents must hold oncoming
dangers against desires.
Rivers enter the graves of other rivers
and fall from other births.
I came from under water.
There was a ladder of light I had to climb.
One joins instead of begins
finds another bar
with higher and lower notes.
Apprehensions and uncertainties
and fragments float and I was saved.
Rain falls and soil slides in,
and the rivers wick
into crevices and creep along concrete forms.
St Louis River from the Iron Range
There, but for the grace of fluid dynamics.
Rivers fill root capillaries
erode the bones
dampen the percussion in water music
carrying all the light.
They pulled me from the river.
The air came back into my lungs.
My mother,
a cantata, opera, a symphony
with continuous finales, was gone
but still arriving.
St Louis River from the Iron Range