Write a poem a day, they say, like
blessings arrive like days, evergreen
and relentless like the river seems
until even the rapids run dry and we
find ourselves stumbling in the rubble
of boulders we told the young would stay
big forever or the dust of moist things
we hoped would drink drought and survive.
I have seen meander maps of the Mississippi
River, traced how they angled themselves
anarchic across millennia too rapid to hold on,
too slow to see, a kaleidoscope den of ghost
snakes writhing skin coil skin soil making
the whole land wet with longing and now
when people lie on dry beds even
they know somewhere water is trying.
Some days my fingers are withered wadis.
I dig words out from them like fossils, pack dirt under
my nails until my elbows ache, upturn
stones tumbled so hard by time their
bodies feel like the skin on the back
of a lover’s knee like they would come
alive again if I sucked them.
Like if I swallowed them I might
learn to speak river, like my tongue
has been survival like surviving tastes
like torque like scars like sliding scale.
Like the only poetry worth writing is a story
of how the land languages its living
while it waits for water to return.
Sarah Amsler 