Dialogue #7

With domestic links removed from my loins,
I left ruined sequoias for the river-quest.
My few chattels with their faint enchantments
decay in my satchel like sad excuses.

Yes, I am the river
and often you have dreamt of me.
My silver bubbles streaming through your fingers.
You return to land before childhood.

I loot the banks, burrow for philology,
But otters wound with unanswerable words.
The rapids construct parentheses that stream down
to where I meet my match in the muck that yields methane.
Can I learn my mouth's own language and remember
my self out of the circle of animals?

Yes, but you must swim under the mud.
See my markings
the snails, the starfish under my skin.
It is not pleasant
When the black muck fills your throat,
your lungs.
But you will survive
to crawl onto the rippled sand-bars
where the sunset
forms towns and washes them away.

(italicized stanzas by Moira Scheuring)
circa 1990