How to Pray in the
Dammed River
The space we stood around had been emptied
Into us to keep, it penetrated
Clearances that suddenly stood open.
High cries were felled and a pure change happened.
Seamus
Heaney
Clearances
The opening in the stones is only
visible at low water and then
the lowest still is unapproachable.
It’s closest to a door beneath
the river and because I don’t
know the way of rivers going,
I can thoroughly sit and watch
the stationed run-off caught
all summer in the century-ago
placed stones: going leafless
trees, two or three fishing
bobbers broke free their rod,
bobbles for a cast-off Christmas
song. An oracle, that
door.
Maybe, if I’d come walking
down river with the same boots
as I’d wear out into low tide
I’d reach, pull the tops up to
my crotch and walk past all
the crockery, river glass, all
that’s been cast off (or pocketed-
because in time I might
find enough of this one pattern
to resemble and reassemble
a memory) and walk, v-ing
the little patches of Jesus
bugs skimming the water, slip
on the slime all waters contrive
to make, toward that door
in the dam. It’s
open, I only
just noticed. It’s
always,
even when the river’s full
of itself and insisting its winter
spoils, even when its behind
the tossed over the face hair
of the goddess’s gate-keeper,
--have your question ready
and
written
on a slip
of your
best
paper –
and then
make
your way with it
in your
fingers – and –
arriving
bow and
breathe
in and swallow
the
breath of the old
river
inside its vestibule
find
the right seam between
two
boulders and heave
but delicately,
like a ballerina,
and only
the arc
(the peace between)
of the
arms – the pinch
of fingers,
the rooted feet
in the
deepest grasses, wet
weeds
reach, balanced, or un
balanced if you need more
forgiving – and wait to be
wait
to be.
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