River Says

I don’t feel you. I am
not lonely.

I am wet.

I gush.

I drift, slip, float, flood.

I percolate. I penetrate.

I swell—
But not with pride.

I sip, lap, suck.

I will swallow you.

…

I do
take lives.

I don’t mean anything by it. And I don’t obsess.

I inundate. I drain.

Deluge.
Course through anything, disperse everything.

I go in, I go out.
Mud wavering, glistening.
White, blue, gray surfaces, shining.

Over, under black

green

depths.

…

I have no curiosity. No scruples.
I don’t give a rip.

You envy me my unselfconsciousness!
You use me for your transformations. Revelations.

I make sound not to thrill you or to calm you.

I don’t see you.

Imagine that.

And I don’t feel sorry. I don’t feel.

…

I have no torments to unravel.

And heaven knows I am
not female!

I rise, reach, fall.

Not ravening, not insatiable. No greed.
No hunger at all.

…

I carry, pool, swim.

Meander. Seep.

I

give

all

I

am

to

give.

…

I do destroy, but not with a vengeance.

God said build a boat.
God said he would flood the wicked world. I had nothing to do with it.

You call me menace, you call me peace. My god,
your ego!

You don’t have a clue.

If I laughed, I would be laughing.

…

I have seen so much shit. So many tires.
Couches!

You

make

me

sick.

I torrent and I scour!
I wrap your sopping mattresses around cottonwood trees.

…

I soak. I sodden. I silt.

I don’t know death, fear death.
I know pale green swollen bodies.
I know rocks in pockets.
Leeches.
I know fish, alive, alive, oh and belly up.

…

If I loved
I would be loving
my otter sliding and plunging.

Deer dipping, spooning, little pink tonguing. Secreting salamanders. Waterbugs.

And ancient great blue heron! Patient.
Stalking still.
Striking.

Meg Ojala
July 2019

Notes:
Louise Bourgeois wrote, “To unravel a torment you must being somewhere.”
In his Notebooks, Leonardo da Vinci described flooding rivers as insatiable, greedy, and ravening.