Tag Archives: water

Sky and Water: sedoka

Why is the sky blue
except from reflected water
stretched between small bits of land?

Why is water blue
except its depths mirror skies
above it, touching everything?

23 MAY 2017

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Something about a city on a river

There’s something about a city on a river:
it could be near the ocean’s coast
stuck like a tick on the business end
of the delta,
or somewhere upstream
where the supply ships send
their soldiers, sorghum and saltpeter
for distribution
to the land-locked plains beyond.

There’s something about a city on a river:
it has less in common with
its inland neighbors,
though mere minutes down the road,
than with far-flung places
on the map that likewise
play corpuscle to some continental vein,
bringing back a tired
and worn out nation’s blood
to its life source.

There’s something about a city on a river,
especially one that finds the sea:
it tends to mix its metaphors
like the colors and creeds of its visitors,
who seek to strike a balance
between old and new,
the known and strange,
finding in diversity a strength
that land-bound armies
cannot know.

There’s something about a city on a river:
evolving with the ebb and flow
of tides beyond mankind’s control;
and those who make their homes there
find a way to bend and shape,
to seek and touch a truth
that in a desert well
or hidden lake
one only gets a taste.

09 APR 2013

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River Road

Down at the end of river road
the houses show off concrete knees,
with skirts drawn just above the mud
that creeps up through the Augustine
beginning early June.

Some rivers, when they start, seem nothing
like their parent ocean’s genes;
they use the drying distance from the shore
while they’re still condensation hung
from gray and pregnant clouds
to form their own personalities.

Yet, even these stray souls return,
some from great lengths, and seek their source;
and once the delta’s fingers grasp
their children’s hands in welcome back,
all rivers lose their separateness.

So slow, they seep back to the sea with saturating steps;
and at the end of river road they meet up, with a roar.

26 May 2005

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