TO REACH THE RIVER WE CROSS AND KEEP CROSSING SOMETIMES
no matter. There’s
a boy who once called this place Cloud
City, & we let him. The sky never has failed
us. Not even today,
though re-enactors pin their tents to it, punch it full of gun-smoke.
Day like lead. We sort sad out, shrinking down
tired
histories we can’t stop until the hour bends, So, gives
enough to reassure that summer is just another
way
to say There’ll be other mornings. We can’t even imagine
the clouds of cities beyond our sight line. But
in the rearview,
that canopied narrowing, the old maps prove
what we’ve known all along: that we only sort
of live
in the places where we live—at the river bottom,
in its memory & at the risk of Fort Adam’s
Reach,
Old River Lake, Old River, False River, Neck Cut-Off, Willow
Cut-Off. What does it matter calling up those
no-more,
those never-been? Sky & river that boy already knew;
any city is more cloud than concrete. No name
keeps
it, shape turning a sort of corridor, tunnel, passing
through & passed & always the past. Land-locked
means
we drink fossil water & what we mean is at the bottom.
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