131. ON CROSSING THE MISSISSIPPI

ON CROSSING THE MISSISSIPPI
I am crossing a bridge over the Mississippi -
'a soup of mud' as Dickens called it. That was then,
of course. Below my feet, somewhere the depths of
careening water dance and sluice around other things.
It is as it always should be : water, seeking its
own level, floats and fills, dices and darts, as if
it had a life of its own...which it does, quite actually.

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We are helpless without it, and when it subsumes us
we are helpless too. Note the houses floating along
in the flood - tippling and toppling over and about,
they flip like simple toys - glassless windows, shaded
eaves and watery porches without their rockers.
Foundations, being useless adjuncts to nothing,
cannot anchor the real against the watery.

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How odd all this is.
How distant from our 'usual'
definitions about how things are.
Bushes and reeds, big trees and weeds,
everything supple and green, lining the banks
and over-hanging the edges - each of them
will tell you (in their weird and effervescent language)
what a powerful force they live amidst; and how
that water feeds them, roils them, and - startlingly -
begs them for forgiveness before it tears them from
their ground and their place and their stand,
on their own 'more solid'
sea of land.