Maybe we are rivers...
on flood watch
Tonight, I sing by candlelight,
a lullaby for insomniacs,
restless souls, and those
caught in the flood zone.
I sing to the river
and her intentions
of swelling, of sprawling
past banks and levees,
beyond the bounds
set by Google maps.
She is cubic tons of
swirling chaos, rewilding herself,
bending us to her will.
For a change.
She threatens in a mother tongue
we can only interpret
with charts and projections.
We create apps to tell us
just how deep
our disconnection goes.
We’re just learning the names
for the watershed
in which we breathe.
Maybe we are rivers:
taking on too much at once
to absorb.
I wake to flash floods every night,
the sheets drenched in flashbacks
of scrolling.
It’s live-streamed
now that we’re tuned in
to prophesies of cresting heights
and the mileposts of mobile homes
surrendering to gravity and grief.
And do we know our neighbor’s name?
And do we know our neighbor’s pain?
Maybe we are rivers
offering a few inches of grace,
swollen, perhaps, but contained,
tributaries of mercy.