Rapture
and things like that
walking by the river
wanting to be it
or at least be in it, part
of its enterprise
of coming from something real
and going somewhere else,
you yearn for that,
you’re up to your ankles already
then step back ashore,
singing, yes, song
takes you a long way,
the urgent articulate muscles
of your body learn from
or maybe they teach the river
how to move and what it means
to move, maybe your body,
shoulders and hips and arms
swung out before you
is the real instructor
the obedient geology of earth
studies to emulate, one day
maybe it will become.
But all your religions
and all your desires
conspire to persuade you
it’s the other way round.
We learn from rivers,
we listen to stone.
You take two more steps
up the bank, the berm,
words, rocks, you sit down
on a stone wait and watch
it all go on without you.
But you are with it as it goes.
Sitting still right here
will take you everywhere.

24 October 2022