"Naming Rivers" - Friday's Assignment for Deborah Ager

Naming Rivers

"... rivers. Someday they will tell me what they want me for."

~ for Deborah A. & the sufferers of Stan - for the survivors



Rivers will lead me,
singe me with their cold fingers.
Old ground gorges
engorged inside me.
Led to the bank of letting in.
Allowing; or damage:
vast destruction on the last land
before happening. Enter!
The door of the wind opens.
Skies fill up with our heavy sorrowing.
And fall's fall falls on the quickening
killing everything in touch. Can it be?
Is this thing we call our heart
breaking arterioles black
in the soul? Drowning Democracy
challenges from afar: Save us
now! "Let it wait and it will be
a catastrophe." And now
they wait, stunned in the freeze,
challenged to survive, gasping
and resting in destiny's cold delight.
"Come for us, now" We are lonely
while the desperate wait
for a fuller mouth. And the river
of grief churns out another
body of work, vomits out
another school block, coughs
up the spume and stigmata
of a nation divided which will
always be defeated. Let a Negro
speak of rivers. Go tell it on the
Mountain. I have been to the Mountain
top, cherished its rivers
and the sanctuary of selection.
Let nature be not defined.
Sing out against the grief
as we feed amongst the hungry,
while they feed on the hungered
and those, hungry of heart amongst us.
I have touched the black water,
seen the red destiny planted
in a bloodied river, been
the rock stolid against the core.
I have worn, and said, and done
as a Nation -- divided, which will never
heal. Take a heart foreign with frieze
and say it: Heart.
Be the engineer,
the Heart Core.
Battle-worn
though
we are --

a river

trickle

you

me

a

.