It was midnight and I was with
the winds that came on the very day
when they were strengthening the walls to try to keep the waters back.
They feared only God and the issues of the tide
but that wild and rolling river just could not be pressed aside.
I saw the burning bush & never heard & the palace of four mirrors.
Five months receded and he stood
in the shadow of the sign.
He couldn’t make his mind
and it showed in the corners of his mouth when he smiled,
but I guess everyone has a different way to deal with pain.
Soft spoken and hardly seen in the cathedral,
she rode across the levy where the peasants were in droves
and watched them slink into the rising Mississippi.
She was wading in the water / everyone is born to trouble
There was no land in sight / she could only love his double
The poet waited in the attic -caught in a writer’s havoc-
when the maelstrom and the hailstones were raving
he waited for the words while Percy’s empire was collapsing
They voted him down and he was defaced &
I was burnt & branded in the hand.
They turned the members of the council against his blood
“Gentlemen never turn on one another”
-each of them took odds for the other’s brother-
Buried by the tension of the town
after they supplicated for forgiveness,
they were pressed to riot in the dust and streets
when they shot the workman down.
There was no solace in the rising sun but he had to go.
His words never flowed in the same channels
& the ink was back in his bottle but wouldn’t flow.
He tried to out run the muzzle flashes he commanded
but the workers left the fields and he demanded
to know the way that lonely people are.
I tried to meet their exodus but couldn’t drift upriver
She had a dream but not an explanation for it,
heard a child crying “mother” but never once for her.
She was windblown and unknown / skin so dry her knuckles cracked /
but she wouldn’t drink from the flood until she satisfied the pact.
Water was rising and the banks washed away
mercury churning / silver no longer in play
flyers in the undercurrent, propaganda on the move
deceiver / tail in the water / one porch light bulb that swings
There was no Promised Land, there was no persecution,
the moon did not reflect enough light for me to see the bridge
They rode on trains to the high ground
where no one delivered the mail.
Their memory / imprinted images & a letter never sent
& no other place to stay & no place else to be & no more history
& grooming & trials & training / straining for the mark.
The refugee best not be caught out after dark
& light was incandescent in the park.
Still & no one would admit that they understood him.
hands went up / feet came down
and he was hanging by a thread
and there was no law to reprimand
when they exhibited his opened head.
The oxen were drowned by their yoke.
The children overturning the oak.
The members of the council filled their pockets and filled their seats
He had his wife and her child in the bow and she watched and said
he pulled at the oars so hard the pivots broke and he cried
when he saw they were at the water’s whim
The debris took his eyes but he already felt
the force of the water that scoured the draw.
He took the pieces that fit, denied he had knowledge of the source
but they pressed him and her name was at his teeth when he broke
I was washed through the trees / nearly killed by the briar
pulled free by the heiress / warmed by desire
and left to the hoax that was consuming the fire.
The water had reached the second flight
and the boards were swelling at The Poet’s feet.
He tipped the bottle and it flowed into a wash
and I wrote when the rain was exhausted and desperate.
The wine had turned to vinegar / cemetery washed away.
The apple orchards were blooming before they were soaked.
In the center there was selfishness and there was water.
When I was the flood and she was the water & I was unchained
& The Poet directionless & luckless & made to roll / no longer born to trouble / not born to joy / born of nothing / borne to nothing / not vacuum / not oblivion no light or black of night or dawn
no lines to follow that were already drawn
I knew how to bring the rain but don’t remember if I danced
what was the purpose held in mind? what cause had been advanced?
That old holy river just keeps rushing though it’s bed
Streetcar driver / lonely maid,
The dusty scholar / books handmade
Merchants all, but a long way home with wagon wheels turning in the mud
and how much can be reclaimed of everything that went down in the flood?
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