Delta

Is this going to be one of those poems

That claim the title

By virtue of line divisions where line divisions would not be

Were it prose?

Because what if it flows and it flows and it flows and instead of neat rows it tumbles and rolls and runs over rocks and zips past the toes and imbues tingling verve in the feet as it goes and the verve ascends over knees and elbows and up through the heart till it reaches the nose where it catches the wind and with it it blows up to the sky where in starlight it glows and brightens the world till everyone knows

there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

Is this going to be one of those poems

That claim profundity

By virtue of allusion

To existential angst?

Because I have it in spades.

In the thickness of my gut,

I feel my futility lurking,

Weighting my feet as I dance.

Perhaps it is this that the water obliterates, not a washing away, but a numbing.

You might feel a little pressure.

Is this going to be one of those poems

That claims artistry

By echoing itself endlessly

Like I do.

I am ninety seven percent ruminant. Two percent is fresh horror,

Bonded like a hydrogen to one percent fresh oxygen - love. That pool from which we drink.

The thing about streams is that they keep moving, chattering, chortling, bobbing and weaving, carrying their flotsam and jetsam, the accidental wreckage and the jettisoned heft of the mind, flowing, inexorably, downhill.

And what when my stream is no stream, one winding ribbon from the heights to the depths?

What when it is a delta?

Where this thought, and this thought, and this thought, and this thought, and more thoughts still, seep through sodden ground and tangles of weed, feeding into and bleeding between one another until fertile plain becomes swamp becomes the sea? How do I tell about that? How do words

Which by necessity come in linear form

Show that here the flotsam has blocked the channel

And here the silt which fed the richest grass has thickened and clogged the stream and the flow must be diverted.

And here, it is too deep to walk.

Would you prefer I track one line, point out where the mangroves grow the thickest, and where the alligators lurk, show you where its least dangerous to swim and where the ground would take planting in the summer, and where the children slipped in and were swallowed by sucking sludge that sounds like farting hippopotami when the water is low and you wade out because it looked untouched and touching is what we do. Treading and stomping and tracking mud where it should not be is what we do.

It will still lead to the sea.

Which looks like freedom,

But treats life and death as equals

And will not be tamed by poetry.