River Lore

image from npr.org

River Lore

“A good river is nature’s life work in a song.”

--Mark Helprin

It is fascinating

to hike up into the glaciers

& visit the deep alpine lakes

that constitute watery wombs

for the divers icy creeks,

born to sprint downhill

toward their erotic

rendezvous with a river.

They say

that even the mightiest

of rivers--the Columbia,

                     Amazon,

                     Ganges,

                     Nile,

                     Colorado,

                     Yangtze &

                     Mississippi,

just single-mindedly flows

from its source to the sea,

and that regardless

of its strength,

it cannot return

to that source

as easily as we can

to our own--and yet

in my view, a river

ever recycling,

ever reinventing itself,

does not think of tomorrow

or dote upon its yesterdays;

for it flows only in the Now,

rushing headlong toward the sea

in order to embrace saline & change.

If it has its own version of a soul,

some metaphysical consciousness,

it remembers its past journey

as it peers into the clouds

and prepares itself

for winged transport

back to another beginning,

a new journey,

a new Now.  

************************

I always feel sad

while in the midst

of a desert trek, 

and I come upon

a phantom rivers’ dry bed imprint

sculpted into the hot sand.

Where did it go?

Why did it leave?

When will it return?

In America’s Southwest,

during rain torrents,

there often are river demons whelped--

flash floods--born as innocent

as black butterflies, sharing

a short life, but adopting the guise

of water-borne behemoth,

eager to wreak havoc

and drown old people

in their classic Cadillacs.

“I have great wealth, yet I am poor--

because I am a river to my people”

--Anthony Quinn 

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub