I bless the deep
water that lets me haul these goods from it,
the sweet fruits
I once called my own
before there was water.
I try to bless the deep water as I pass
over the drowned town,
but how I miss the trees beneath it,
the medicines I dried and culled,
the place I first kissed,
and all my other goods,
even the floor I painted yellow,
and memories of my sister’s small house,
her sons learning to throw the ball
or their bicycles passing by with ribbons on handles.
And my own son born right at home,
even where my man was buried,
was there
though they said they’d move it.
Sometimes I dream it will all rise up
floating, the entire world drifting up
and lo, the mighty bones of the dead,
even those of other centuries,
floating like winter white weeds
and fruit from the orchard down at the bottom
will tumble to the shores
of new landowners.
The rest of us go searching for what we lost
early each morning or at night,
our little canoes and rafts above all we lost, our world
with its sweetness, its berries and loves.
Now there is this future, the futures,
a dam and a river,
not the beautiful spring
from underground, its sweet water rising as the force of life,
but this has thrown our earth
off its tilt one more degree
this blue planet floating through the black universe,
and I know now what plans begin in the shadows
of the rich, as they look away,
but even so, I still do love water, so rare in its clarity
so filled with even the human darkness
deep, the stuff of mines and taking,
the remaining fruits of memory,
and the thin strength of single molecules
that hold me.