Seven-Star Bird

(reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press)

                       And god's anger called his rivers all and told them to let

                       the river horses run wild as they ever would, and the

leaping rivers flooded the great plains . . .

—Ovid

As breezes lap the shallow-tugged tide flow

And swallows twitter and skirt the dusk,

We lie within the wreckage of the stars—

The moon spill, our planet's pull—this sad machine.

With you sleeping against my chest,

Having drifted off as Venus began to blaze,

I feel my father's heavy breath bear

Down against my cheek, a finger toward the comet's tail:

Like a damn flashlight looking down, he said.

For three nights we watched it, then that light was out.

So we steered by the swirling mathematics

Of whiskey and revenge, the business of getting,

Then of letting go. Stars gather in the sky like rain—

Dizzy atoms that collapse, collide:

In our dream the dead of Friendship, Texas,

Stand on the shore of their once-town singing:

         Let the river horses run

Let them run . . .

Once, in America, in full nakedness,

Our family rivered these lands with abandon—

From Moravia to Galveston to Friendship, Texas—

Their wild seeds sown, their hearts full of leaving,

They longed to stay: Abide, Abide, Reside—

But the tide comes to meet us and also to take us away:

When the dam was built to swell the rich towns south,

The flood spilled over . . .

Let the river horses run . . .

Valentinian speculation holds

That our souls, as light, are drawn to the waxing moon

Which then, upon the wane, delivers its freight

To the darker dark beyond—electrons

Finally freed into streams of gravity

Gone wild: while alone

In the dust of Palestine, sad Luria

Watches as God withdraws and so the world arises.

          Let the river horses run

Let them run . . .

If, as has been said, it is our very love of God

That separates us from Him, can't we say

That the names we sketch on the churning atoms

Of this world's things, while keeping us apart,

Allow us also to love? Isn't this enough,

The shadow that we know a swallow by?

The tide flows in, the moon spill: let's

Hymn down the river, witness the wresting away:

If America drew us to a destiny of desire,

It was the outfall of a single star stunned,

Our sweet metals and machines: so

Return, exile, then return again:

Want no more than water does, low places

To dwell and the gravity to change.

And if you, too, are lost one day in loss itself,

May you trace a bird amid the mess of stars—

May you name it as you wish—

Seven-Star Bird, Lover, God—

And may its wandering guide your own.

          Let the river horses run, Let them run,

Let them run wild as they ever would . . .