Member Poem

 
Towns look up at the Mississippi
from below the level of the sea,
breathe in its silt through lungs
that have to make do for gills.
There's nothing pure about these waters.
But memory doesn't ask of time
that it see clear to the bottom.
 
And the river flows never far from a cemetery
whose dead silently rejoice in the lapping.
Graves are not the anomalies they are elsewhere.
These are stray branches caught between rocks
or buried in the reeds.
The Mississippi sympathizes with spirits.
It too can move on
and yet be left behind the times.
 
Never does flowing water seem so stagnant.
an illusion blessed by
green moss on stones,
fading French names
carved into the steamy, fragrant air of dusk.
 
A boat idles by,
Despite the putt-putt of its engine,
and flanks of moldy wood,
it achieves grace
like all do as they skim the surface,
Even the mallards.
Even a stray pelican blown up from the delta.
 
The Mississippi settles in its flow, rich and sustaining.
It meanders through the lively and the doomed.
It would love to show you the gold
but the upstream dross will have to do.
And it inevitably obeys the first law of rivers.
Do as the map tells you.
And then more.