THE RIVER CATARACT
I ran the river Cataract
I struck its stones
I breathed its skies
I knew its lovely ember music
before the pail of day was spilled
I ran the river Cataract
I flung its stones
I flew its feet
I flung my whimsy from its boughs
its pail was well upset
I crossed the forms of myriad dunes
I picked coins from its shifting sands
I crossed my arms under the sweet-dying stars
blinking until I could breathe my slipping dreams into the air
--5/2006
Note: this poem is inspired by "The River Susquehanna" to which I gratefully listened at my only trip to the Dodge Poetry Festival years ago (poetic license as always). The author of that poem is an eminent contemporary poet.
The older African-American poetess Gwendolyn Brooks, now deceased, was also there. Closest I've been to the center of poetry, in terms of (excuse me) power names.
Yet I had a feeling that I was not nearly as close as it appeared, because to actually correspond with their poetry was to correspond with their foundational reasoning, something that I, as a lonely teen, was adverse to trying. If it did occur to me, it was as a sense of fear that we're all trying to eat the last crumbs.
Powerful poetry and the passion to feel it with love are not things that mutually exist in my poetry at this stage, which may be in part due to my failure to sympathize with other voices.
I cry, and I make people cry, and I often become overwhelmed. But poetry, perhaps as ever, has not been about happiness. In poetry, wit is the closest thing to it.
Poetry 2006
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