What it Means to Live Downstream

My family doesn’t gather
aggregaterockssmoothed
for holidays
madebytidalritual
we don’t see each other smiling
riverweavestheuniverse
over roast turkeys and heavy
alivinggift
boxes wrapped in green foil.


I know no stories
salmonrocksriveroceanwillow
of previous generations
wovenlikebasketsoverandunder
somebody was a farmer
watersinksintosoil
somebody was an aristocrat
waterblessesthebody
there is the Finnish front
waterdefinesboundaries
there a Catholic
waterissanctified
there not.


Without God to tell us
whatitmeanstolivedownstream
what the land is for
beyondtheuseofwater
what women are for
beyondtheuseofman
we hold dominion only
riverweavestheuniverse
over ourselves.

The Republic of Conscience

I.
When I landed in the republic of conscience
it was so noiseless when the engines stopped
I could hear a curlew high above the runway.

At immigration, the clerk was an old man
who produced a wallet from his homespun coat
and showed me a photograph of his grandfather.

The woman in customs asked me to declare
the words of our traditional cures and charms
to cure dumbness and heal the evil eye.

No porters. No interpreters. No taxi.
You carried your own burden and very soon
your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared.

II.
Fog is a dreaded omen there but lightning
spells universal good and parents hang
swaddled infants in trees during thunderstorms.

Salt is their precious mineral. And seashells
are held to the ear during births and funerals.
The base of all inks and pigments is seawater.

The sacred symbol is a stylized boat.
The sail is an ear, the mast a sloping pen,
The hull a mouth-shape, the keel an open eye.

At their inauguration, public leaders
must swear to uphold the unwritten law and weep
to atone for their presumption to hold office---

and to affirm their faith that all life sprang
from salt in tears which the sky-god wept
after he dreamt his solitude was endless.

III.
I came back from that frugal republic
with my two arms the one length, the customs woman
having insisted my allowance was myself.

The old man rose and gazed into my face
and said that was official recognition
that I was now a dual citizen.

He therefore desired me when I got home
to consider myself a representative
and to speak on their behalf in my own tongue

Their embassies, he said, were everywhere
but operated independently
and no ambassador would ever be relieved.

---Seamus Heaney

After D.H. Lawrence & Czeslaw Milosz

(Like Lawrence’s Mystic on Milosz’s Earth)

in the pursuit of the real relentless and sweet like a too-big bite taken
from wineshineskinned red apple clear juice sweating coolly
out the sides and center divot of my lips
beyond and back I slide ride diggety-dive
over and under my thumb holding up that slack-jawed chin grin and

tuck it in hide my surprise
don’t push the envelope
fold it in half
remember the dead
fold it in half again
forget your promises
fold it again
whisper
try folding the thickness one last triangle time
suck in a tooth-shuddering flick of air
between pulsing clenches of jaw

in the pursuit of the unattainable
sullen and bitter like a broken grape seed
against the side of my tongue
bite down on this
and wander in the streets of some city that seems familiar
to someone else

capture a friend

peering wildly
shaking fiercely
emanating joy
& turning, turning
whole novels written
in her eyes
then turning bitter &
strange rage
whole novels written
in her eyes
somehow without words
we say so much
but still
talk, talk, talk

---Junie-Moon Curtiss

I write to put the world right---
the landscapes of my dreams
fruits, tender-fleshed
rubied juices
the uneven rubble
of riverrocks under foot

wasps seeking flowers
buds
closed and crenellated like fists

the landscapes of philosophy
languages that disappear shouts that drown
murmurs
words like granite or like
butter on the counter

words that shape the mouth speaking.

Waxwings

Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings
chat on a February berrybush
in sun, and I am one.

Such merriment and such sobriety---
the small wild fruit on the tall stalk---
was this not always my true style?

Above an elegance of snow, beneath
a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four
birds. Can you mistake us?

To sun, to feast, and to converse
and all together---for this I have abandoned
all my other lives.


---Robert Francis