RIVER TALK

“and I let the river answer…”
            —Leonard Cohen

 When I let the river answer it babbles
barges, hooks, oars,
undertows.
It surges kings and arms,
Black Death, Jews, witches,
poison, smell of burning,
confides: heroes,
collaborators, pyres.
When I let the river answer it
obsesses about the
nuclear plant upstream.
Rivers speak to other rivers.
When the earth trembles
even rivulets feel it
in their crevasses.

When the fish sicken,
the river can’t get up and leave.
The saules along the bank weep.
Turtledoves toot like tugboats
from children’s books,
the river is never fooled.
It is old, older,
doesn’t remember Suzanne
but Johnny Depp’s face in Chocolat
ripples up the canal.
The river’s stubborn,
flows despite pizza vans and dumps,
despite bridges and Peugots racing overhead.
It looks up at the white sky
and reflects, mouths
slick rocks, lightning and shifting
banks, fish skeletons,
drowned boys, drought, dust,
softened earth,
grass waving bye! like Sampson’s locks.