THIS MISSISSIPPI RIVER IS
A luminous conversation
Without an alphabet
Pregnant with snowflakes
A billion years
Coded visions
The blind see
Icy serpentine curves
On highway oblivion
Cast broadly ironic condolences
For the quick, the quaking awakening
The living for the double-dared absolute
We must be still until our bodies accept
The emotion of
water. Only then can our minds
Grant water
permission to speak.
Gates, dams, locks, spilling ways
Shadows to be ignored
Darkness of darkness
So logical it shines
Water enters before a man enters water,
Rides an ark of bones in a space which never heard of
time.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
