Despair

“A creek is more powerful than despair.”
— Jim Harrison

Do you remember the moment before I knew you,
when neither of us existed in the manner in which
a creek does not exist before rain?
I’ve been dreaming the last few nights that I found you,
an eddy that would not,
as it wound up, receive me. You were a star
with ancient arrowheads of trout,
and I felt the pain of breathing then.
Remember the moment you no longer understood
how the rocks could swim like seals,
or how oceans are small compared to the creeks
running through the centre of our lives?
I wonder,is there a fifth season, wandering,
a twisted creek that, with its long fingers,
no longer feels for a Spring?

What I would like to forget is the snow
The way it does.
The manner in which it hesitates
On the black earth like backs of fish
chumming in shallow haze
Trampling over frozen words.
The young deer making it across the car
Scouring the brain’s slippery scrawl.
The coming of Summer, the light
Loose in the fields for the love of other things
Which still sing to me from
Shadows smouldering behind trees.

And I see the river through the window,
as if the window were the river.
“Your metaphor,” you remark, “confuses me.”
It does not confuse you.
You know, inside the window,
instinct stirs, reeling, changing
course, giving back itself.
Engulfing it, you
confuse the river.