Remember magic women on the foaming rocks

I'm trying to recall

 those mermaids:
women who dance on rivers laughing in the foam
spinning their bodies
catching fish
washing laundry
drowning children
                              the joy in them.
                              the connection to the awe of the land
                              the power
                     
this is a way to live

didn't I see them?
weren't they my sisters?
why haven't they written in so long

 Sometimes I see them I think
in people here and there
 I LOVE YOU I shout
just in case

and I walk slowly by the river
always

savior complex

As a younger thing I fantasized tackling a Beloved from the path of a fast car, tumbling with the grateful other, becoming seen and loved and touched at once
Today in the shower I fantasized storming a coat market, after the cities collapse, and shouting til the crowd joined in, "One person, One Coat" and elbowing the security person hard in the nose before being surfed away by the joyful becoated mob - I saw no Beloved in that fantasy, but if they were there, they would have been impressed

revelations

It's time for Leonard Peltier to get up, walk through his prison walls and out to the White House
to sit in the center of the malignancy and signal its deconstruction
returning the land to the water, the salmon, the forests, the peoples, none of them those who have died
but all of them
and why has it taken so long, Leonard?
Did he doubt his own powers, or was he waiting for us
to act on our own, absent a hero
or to ask why we kept him in so long

If I may

Would it be alright if I
Consume you
Would you like me to
I often notice the timbre of your laugh
And want to consume you
Or a shape you make
Could we speak intimately
And could I consume you
In the way that assumes we are true
To what we say
Not spying for anyone
Safe enough to sit in silence
All at once
Or slowly
Or to walk
Every inch of you
If that's what you want
A long life
Or a short one
I'll begin

No selfie

Because my light blinds the mirror
I tell stories of my face once seen

Motherfucking Susquehanna hauling the history of the world down Chesapeake bay

Flying down hiway 322 in the bucket seat
Ford Red takes a swig
Water bottle with something in it
The river near high as the road
For up on the white trails the snow seems
Like a fact like itself
All the while it is disappearing
Ain't that the way of things
And the river carries it away
Ain't that the way of things
I'll always be 20 I'll always by 30 I'll always be 40
Ain't that the way of things
We say frozen in time
But ice too is an illusion
Melting
Reforming
Passing through our time and we through its
Even the striated rocks are flowing
Accretions of the hill
Ford Red is far behind us and maybe she tossed her bottle out the passenger window
And nevermind it
Not forgotten not gone
 present in memory
Snowy trails up the hills
Like pillars of smoke
All melting things
All dissolving things
Leave their mark
Dissolution itself is an inscription
When we can not drink from the river
We are cut off from the memory in the water
Our water bottle
Has its own memories
Mixed up together
But Ford Red speeds by the river
We speed by the river
Shouting at us wet knowledge
Like faerie fruit and Alice bottles
We drive on
Not drinking
Free of the place
We are passing through
Illusions of ourselves
Smoke on the roads
Ain't that the way
Empty of the water of the hills
Full of something from the water of the world
That ain't the way
 In the bucket seat of the world
Roadside bottle people
Tossed in cataracts
 Ain't
You'll feel it on your toes
When the water rises
You'll stand in the mud of it
Just behind your home
The hills will flow by
Fishless
We'll wash over you
We'll be a battered plastic bottle
Ford Red and I
Wearing only tatters of that blue label
Knocking your ankle in the slow flow
Drink us up
Remember us
Belong to that place
Dissolve
Ain't that the way