Passage
       

It's hard to tell what will be important. The river
is high again and so are the teenagers encrusting
its edges, beady-eyed and black-dad, sideways
glancing, suspicious as crows. Each of the murder
a dead version of yourself: one scratching peace
signs into the dirt with her toe. One singing
ugly. One poking a drowned worm, expressionless.
And you stand apart, head cocked, remembering
that the French for to happen also means to arrive,
that sometimes we say deceased when we mean
departed. The obscure chorus of your own life
keeps cawing into the diamond dark, under the roaring
of each body you inhabit, the waters, the others
you've flocked to, even when all you can hear
are your own hard swallows, or the sweet shriek
of those far-off trains you suspect are coming
to claim you. To lay open the hills you haven't seen.

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Copyright © 2015 Caylin Capra-Thomas All rights reserved
from Crazyhorse
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