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Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Willamette

The silt-slipped skin off a mounded barrow
clouding inlets as the rain carries a wet dust
down, tears mixed with mud on my cheeks.
Deckled edges—oak and cottonwood leaves
turning to coal, slime mold tumuli, drowned
grass. A slick of algae greases where I stand,
so I straddle a tine of tarnished water—a rill
forking from creek into river—unsteady on
a fallen branch. (The crows above me all see
how the river bisects me, how it seeps right
through me, all the chambers of my heart.)