River Psalm (2004)

o lady lady lady lady
lady you are gone
but I remain
to sing this river's song

I wrote that in spring
1979, rivering words
on paper the awesome
gout I had felt earlier
in the day when I retraced
my steps back to
that bridge on which,
one year earlier,
I kissed my first
passionate love
while the Spokane
river pounded hard
below. Now wounded,
harrowed, and barely thawed
from a bad winter
in which her absence
froze me in ways
as deep and majestical
as the depths she
first opened in me
with a kiss -- One year's
bad harrow from that
birthing bliss, I
had walked downtown
on sidewalks finally
bare of snow and ice
and walked out, alone,
over that frightening
foment -- of the river,
at least, ferrying
the melted icepack
from the mountains
west toward the sea.
Today I'm not sure
what gripped me more,
the river scene
I had returned to,
expecting to find
her on that bridge,
or the way in which
the words cascaded
from pen to paper
in full memory
of what passion's
crashing billowing
cruelly descending
knife fully felt like.
I stood on that bridge
that day -- in flesh
and on paper --
enveloped in the
roar and the mist,
the steel track
shaking and trembling
from the naked pound
of that huge water's
roll and pour and
smash to falls below.
That sound -- in
the river and in
my ear -- nailed
something angelic
to the hands spread
in my heart, hands
which once had
squeezed her breasts,
hand which on
that anniversary
and now I spread
wide in bittersweet
full welcome.
The scene was both
pregnant and bereft
of her when I got
home and wrote that
poem, my very
verbal sense trying
to cup her in that
bridge-span's vigil.
As if words for a river
on a mighty day in
spring long after
she had left me
returned that shapely
ass to my hands,
the poem's motion
her own rocking
on my hips,
my words distilled
from all the
ones she once
(and only once)
mouthed in the
psalms of high pleasure,
naming every fish
and glade in all
the seas below.
Ah, to recall that
sweet madness
in a river's spasm
of a poem! To have
the fullness of her
absent that real
woman who gripped
down as I spasmed
and railed jots
of motlen sperm in
her: To hold high
that flood of light
in the collapse which
all falls and lovers
share as they
merge and so
dreamily drowse
on down to the sea:
Such was my feeling
then on paper
that even today
I know like my
own hands the
gauge and length
of every steel nail
the moment hammered
through my palms,
shrieking words
which pierced through
skin and tendon
and splintering bone
in an ecstasy of
pain and blood,
fastening me forever
to the soul-wood
of that day. How
could she be there in
every way that
dishevelled, half-lunatic,
badly hungover
March afternoon,
fully resonant in
the river's rapture
and pouring bliss
-And yet be gone,
never to be held again?
That poem "River" was
the cry upon my lips
that day when one
faith dies and
another sprang to life,
freed from God and
godly women to build
a chapel by that scree,
a tide of lines which
keep old flames alive
in waters dark and fresh
and wild. The river's
song is where her
single kiss, that raging
water, and your
strange dominion
in my history
all merge and sigh
in mint-fresh malt
and salt confusion.
See: words
are pouring from
my mouth as hot
as those molt
angels I unfurled
deep into my first
love one hungover
morning half a lifetime
ago, giving her
the wings to go.
Each word here's
a stallion of that
stampede; this poem
is a mash of
those blue hooves
galloping wild over
the falls. And you
are there beyond
where all water
flows on, down and
in and deep, astride the
torrent of one
man's river ache
to bed in your
deepest womb
& stare in your
eyes at last
your every body
clenched fast to mine.