I.
Thousands of miles from home, you wake
in a cheap hotel with thirst so urgent you have
no choice but to find the bathroom faucet
with your mouth, drink deep, and understand
the daily sigh made by bodies everywhere
in this small town. Your new cushy job gives you
bottled artesian water, which you consider
as you taste the tap. Used to be there was
no good distance between this rivery tang
and your fluid desires. Used to be you’d shove
aside a sweaty friend or jab a sibling
for the first shot at placing lips to the only
neighborhood source. Used to be no future
in yearning. Feel how far you’ve come?
II.
Today a flood, and you see the risk
in proximity, in life stretched by loving
both a river and the rain:—to watch what feeds you
run dangerous, the Biblical possibility
of nurture rising into a final rage.
Father rain. Mother river. When it pours,
and you love when it pours, this river turns
tannic with a turbulence you can recognize
as home—: Mother rain. Father river.
But what course isn’t threatened when
the right season licks its lips? What epic
confluence can avoid the violence
of giving and taking such shape? Mother father.
River rain. If given the chance, you too will empty
or swell—will lay claim to every unrooted thing
in the name of a love you learned from flood.
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