1
In the riven channel torqued in its bends
Movements of fish, swaying of sunken trees
Fledge no light. Days ride adrift
At the mirror surface.
By night the great fish
Hunt the shallows. Their silent breathing
Opens red flowers of their gills. At dawn
They sound from their feeding.
The current
In its troughed motion moves the foundered dark
Where the drowned men set their souls afloat.
In their clotted eyes the dark is whole,
Their vision unlidded by no shadow’s shape.
They dive more lightly than fish
In the twisted eddies.
I recall the men
Of no hope who built them boats of stone;
The shape of my face afloat,
A black leaf washed over the eyes.
I have felt the water flow
In the hollow where my hand folds.
2
Since morning rain fell
Down the valley, the river
Booming at the top of its banks,
Blackbirds raucous on driftlogs,
Riding the branches of wrecked trees.
In their stilted houses
The river men sleep
Fitful in their sweated beds.
In their dreams fish
Enter the squared windows,
Brown water curls
Over the thresholds.
Rain steady past darkfall,
I lean to the thickening water
Raising the lines, the boat’s bow
Nudged to the channel’s black,
The sun cooled and dark
In the river’s stones.
My blunted eyes, sight’s edge
Fail at my hands’ shape,
Black water holds no image
Of my face. I have become
My shadow leaned above water.
In my mind’s dark I hang
With the hooks in my hands,
Swing in the fish tail currents.
To the high-porched house,
The white room composed by the waiting
lamp,
I return from the hooked night.
Yet it shall not be undone.
I am derived of my death,
Marked by the black river.
With this knowledge I will enter mourning.
3
After the floods of spring
The river men return
To their hollow doorways
In the broken valley,
Cross the chaos of mud
Where no foot track
Cups its shadow.
In the days of rain
The valley leveled
With the brown flood.
The massed waters held
The hill trough beyond beginning
In the darkness of fish.
Within the crippled eyes
Of the river men
No known shape twisted
A word from their tongues.
The fingers of the river
Slide from the doorposts,
Its waters quieted
In the maimed channel.
In silence the river men
Watch morning shape itself
Upon the drying valley,
Whose mud shape assumes
The solidity of shadow,
In the river men’s eyes
Transfixed as stone;
Their named hurt
A shape in chaos.
The river’s injury is its shape.
4
At the first bird’s cry night breaks.
The sun moves from its past light
Into this morning, forces the dark
To tree shapes about my house.
My wakened shadow unjoins from sleep.
The sun sets vision afloat,
Its round hard glare down
All the reaches of the river,
Light on the wind waves
Running to shore. Under the light
River and hill divide. Two dead
White trees stand in the water;
The scintillant river casts
A net of light about them,
Their snagged shapes break through.
At noon the wind lays.
The trees stand on the banks
With their shadows beside them
Undisturbed, the leaves quiet
In their spear shapes. The sky
Lies flat on the river, blue
On green, their colors together.
In green water two white clouds
Move deeply.
The image of my face
Is on the water, the river flowing
Its color under the skin. The sun
At its angle thrusts the shadow
Of my face-face of no eyes
Which stares both ways.
I am held in my countenance.
The horizons of this valley,
The folded hills
Have the breadth of an eyelid
Entering my eyes, the sky
Is no larger than a coin.
The point of the sun
In my eyes will become a darkness.
5
A great broad flower
Lying upon its green and curving stem
Is this valley
It is a flower of durable blooming
Complete in no year or season
But in successive moments perfect
As a bird flying
Across black tree trunks
As the mouth may speak its movement
Colors of the hills
Its petals continually change
In spring color of redbud
White of dogwood
Brown of plowed land
In summer a weaving of greens
Of willow and maple
Yellow green of sycamore
Green of corn in broad fields
In autumn flaring red
Of sumac red of oak and maple
Brown of blighted locusts
Streaked with goldenrod
Purple of ironweed
Winter brings no closing
For the flower
Striped with white trunks
Of sycamores
Black elms tangled together
The days themselves
This summer season
Are parti-color on the hills
Red in the slant light
Of mornings and evenings
Green in the dry light of noon
Entering blue of distance
Where the sky bends upon them
Always the brightest colors
Leaning toward the sun
At night the flower is black
Or night is another flower
Blooming upon day shape
The scent of the flower
Is that of the wet earth
Elixir of final rot
Musk of the depths of rivers
A flower’s most secret growing
Its shape is the shape
Of all rains
The coiled waters
Who remembers the opening
Of this flower when the rain
Lay clear upon it
Who can speak of its withering
At the close of its season
Past the sleep of lovers
In the darkened houses
Its blooming shape changes
No man’s knowledge
Has claim upon its age
From its budding
To the seed stone of its death
I own neither its movement
Its substance nor its age
It is mine as from my doorway
I perceive it blooms
I possess it as I call it flower
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