Where Waters Meet

The river as idea intrigued her, its release
To the ocean like a sigh, two colors, spinning
Sediment falling into a sure, visible crease.

She traces from the estuary’s salt thickening
Waters to the river’s trail that leads always back
To snow and granite’s forgotten beginning.

But here the ocean swallows the river and its flak,
Its silty vomit, its conversion of dirt and stone
To sand, to water, to loss with every wave’s smack

Into the shore. With every drop that drifts, bone
Dissolves to ocean, to a density of salt
And sinks to a black abyss under the ocean’s groan.

Of water’s consequence to land, she knows no fault.
She’s a lover of water like the oyster
Luring land to a pearl, in whose sheen war and love are spelt.

She wraps her arms around her, seeks the cloister
Of evening tide where voice is but a token
Gathered in the sea’s matrix, in its blue lacquer.

She knows this at the river’s end, the omen
Clear as the moon’s pull. Two waters, two testaments
In whose design she seeks the faultless origin,

The grammar the waves speak, the shrill monuments
Whispering the name of God like so many choirs.
The waves yield answers in careful advertisements.

The wind and waves call forth with their own desires.