River and Rock

12 October 2k9

A poem for someone I greatly admire. Someone who, though disabled of the body, has a mind all the stronger for her many painful trials. Someone who, instead of retreating into isolation and depression, summons the strength of a bright, compassionate spirit, and formidable will, to help others every day. Many are often in a time of despair. Vulnerable to the demons at our backs, you show us that we are not the sum of our failings, or our illness.

And rather than trying to heal our wounds, she somehow finds a way to help us find healing within.

Sensei, you are to us as the patient river is to eternal rock:

slowly helping to reshape us over time, gently coaxing out the beatific within.

With gratitude, I dedicate this poem to you.

~*~

the bent wing

A convocation of crows has gathered,
raucous beneath an Elder riverside Oak.

Rough northern sister of the steaming Delta,
the mighty Mississippi River churns in Her cradle.
First road of the New World, She bears our burdens still,
Taking what the Iron Range sends Her.
—In our hearts, the word for patience is River.

We deny Her:
We measure the rain and pray against Her rising.
We build a stone girdle for Her, with deep steel locks,
and the bargemen sing that Her curves sway for us alone.

When we sleep we think the River is not changing.
—In our hearts, when we read the future,
the runestone always says River.
We dredge Her like a clumsy lover
and believe we have revealed all of Her secrets.

When the Lady of the Lake
fled the ruins of the Old World,
fled the smoke and plague of
the last siege of Avalon
She rose from the water
and looked to the West.

When the Lady of the Lake
fled the ruins of the Old World,
She came to the Mississippi River.

Yet we deny the River, with noxious veils of toxin,
with shackles of reeking effluence.
We deny Her suffrage and this can come to no good.

I dance among the cryptic crows, wooing my muse
from Her moonshrouded bed. I caw and croon into Her dreams
of the warm summer sun as She shuffles chunks of dirty ice.
Restive, in the corsets we fashion of sandbags and cinderblock stays,
She murmurs that the spring floods are coming.

—In our hearts, Love is a River and the embrace of
some bridges remind me of Consequences.

A bent wing glides above me
whispering black the River Song.

Scattered leaves at my feet,
brown from winter’s grasp,
have become frozen in the ice.

A piece of my heart there resides,
waiting for the River to rise.

~D.C. McKenzie

—end transmission—