From Montana you coalesce,
confer with tributaries that lead to you like roads to Rome,
grumble east of the Great Divide
among the grasses and the boulders
(I stood on the lookout, once,
having paid eight dollars to see you,
expecting a spring welling from the earth
but instead finding a swarm of converging rivers where the humans
had arbitrarily said, "Now it's the Missouri!")
You wind and weave and quiver
your way downstream
crest after crest of current
gathering silt and mud and DDT
from the 70s and toxic
nitrogen overflow from farmlands and
fish poop and bird poop
and the bald eagles circling you for food
(mutant catfish live under the dams, they say:
catfish the size of Volkswagen bugs
with mouths ever open, smacking their lips,
gulping the galloping water from the dams
and all its trash)
and the sunlight on the water
and the seagulls
(why are there seagulls here? I asked one January;
there is no sea, and why are they in such big flocks?)
From the barren West
they stick up and smack against the sky
and tear the clouds to shreds
and stun me to silence—
through this landscape the river, my river, flows
(there was really bad flooding in Nebraska, they said;
was I safe? yes, that's much further upstream, I say,
and I heard it was bad, that sounds really rough)
The river wasn't supposed to be this narrow,
and it carved a slough, a vast plain of wetlands,
where now my house is and my pumpkins grow healthy because of the river-bottom soil,
but the river is corralled and levied and barred,
and when she overflows her manmade banks we panic
and say "flood!"
when really she's remembering where she used to run
until we tried to make her fit our rules,
consequences be damned and dammed
(a billboard off highway 370 used to say,
"It's Called a Flood Plain Because It Is a Plain That Floods!")
She's my river,
my mother,
listener of teenaged angst
and grown-up angst
where she comforts me with birds
floating over the river—
Is that a hooded merganser?—
a distraction, a sense of peace, a timelessness,
a reminder that the river doesn't start here or end here,
and neither do I.
(My little brothers came for Thanksgiving and we
gathered honey locust pods and tossed them in the river,
and they asked if we were planting trees downriver,
and I said yes, perhaps we will plant locust trees in New Orleans.)
Her quietness still stills me:
perspective, a breath;
summer evenings when we spotted a beaver paddling in the shallows
and the large family reeled in paddlefish while their boombox
blasted mariachi
winter mornings when the ice has rimed the edged of the water
and we see muskrat tracks
a wavy line with tiny footprints on either side, in the snow on the ice on the water
The point is still the same, to enjoy, to be dwarfed, to be held in
familiarity—
family—
home.
(I didn't notice that the river flowed north here until I was a teenager,
and I had to look at a map to figure it out)
Once we visited the confluence
another point where the men looked at the river
and said, "No longer the Missouri— it's the Muddy Miss!"
where you converge with your sister flowing cold from Minnesota
and dance your way south to Louisiana, to the Gulf,
to the ocean.
I've never been to New Orleans,
never seen you escape your banks into the saltwater,
laughing in the sunlight, but
someday I will, and that will be wonderful, because I will be able to envision you
at beginning, middle, and end:
Montana, Missouri, and Mexican Gulf:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:
part of the circle of the world,
evaporating to the sky to seep across the earth
with Sahara sand and moss spores,
your molecules mingling in a water glass in Beijing,
in the Rhine, in the Nile,
in the sharp intake of my breath while I'm sobbing
by your banks because I feel so broken,
nourishing us.
artery of the land, biding your time;
waiting for us to unhinge you so you can breathe
and cast silt across the cornfields
and summon the snow geese, herons, goldeneyes
and people back to you,
your undammed self,
a gift,
clean and glorious—
(I never knew to dream of this day, but I dream of it now,
and I ache)
But in the meantime you slip quietly by me today
covered in ice floes jostling slush against each other,
white noise,
calming,
a baby monitor against my heart
saying "Hush-a-bye, hush-a-bye"
and I think it's merciful that time marches on
like March after February,
sunshine after freeze,
daffodils poking through the ground,
and in my heart
the ice starts to crack.
Who am I
by the river,
who am I?
in this water from Montana, from snowstorms and springs,
who am I?
Vapor rises in the sun
and silence.
~~~
" !"
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