Riverness

Riverness

I could cease here,
on these flats with that silt,
vertebrae stretching out of skin,
not la petit mort but actually gone,
grey of the river, lips cracked like parched earth,
body as still as the island where no one bar fishermen go.
I could be thistle fodder, and rape seed, and salt licked,
until my marrow soaks fearlessly into quick sand,
draped in seaweed, mouthed upon by fish.
The morbid has me by the neck today
until an American,
who looks a little like God might look, speaks,
he says,
"You've picked a day for it,"
all twang and remembering
and his wife and he
take the field rows back toward the village,
over the bridge,
out into insect utopia -
and I watch them go,
and I'll watch him go
and then at some point,
someday, probably some way
from the river and clink,
I'll go on over a bridge myself.

Day 3/14 Orford circular, plus Pump Street bearclaw.