!!!: Rivers

Suddenly,
being needed is heaven,
and heaven is right here and now
in the Texas hills
by the Guadalupe
with little ones to look after

even when they are pure ruckus
and the day is too hot and still.

The sweat comes
and flows, a flood to fill
the driest emptiness.

There's a river

dripping down my back

and shaking me by the shoulders -

carving my heart
into something smoother,
older,

snaking under shirt,
winding over breast

leaving goose-pimpled
ripples in its tracks.

There's a river
of misplaced manatee clouds
wading past the white sun,

and waves of easy days
between the tougher ones,

times like drowning and rescue,
like hair dripping and drying
and like diving in,

dregs of marvelous moments, more of them
floating over my face
than the stuff that squishes
between little toes
 under that crawling green water.

There are rivers --
let me hold them,
and sink my ribs like mossy sticks -
bend my waist into riverbanks...

Make my blood the mud at the bottom,
my skin, the soft suck of the stream,
my eyes, its emerald-shine and sparkling...

Let me be and be beside them,
taking pieces of silt, spit,
sun, and shade -
carrying it all through old and new days.

I give my heart to the flow of things,
to be roughed into
the perfect skipping stone.