Après le Déluge, or How to Return 1

Forget French fads,

paradigms, Foucault and Sartre,

the eggistential toothpick, the semiotic egg,

and the text beyond which there is nothing

but eggheads.

Make the river your own. Rename it the Tar

after its shiny blackness and nothing will fall

routinely into place

like that dogwood, white and dying

for attention at your window.

Tell yourself a room’s the wrong place to receive.

Quit the house like a bad job.

Hand your dead brother the shovel,

shove off in a leaky canoe,

and follow that monarch, its orange flit

above the current.

Immensity will make a return

and every face will offer less

than the smooth cool face of the water.

Let the river teach you

how to steer toward subtle surprise.

Tell me, what even comes close

to this scented air you’ve noticed for the first time?

The sun falls,

anoints the surface with orange oil.

Dark lifts from the water faster than you think.

A meander brings

a soft snicker of owl wings close to your gunnels.

Around the bend, a lamp appears

with a Coleman hiss

and a hunched figure with his hook

pole-tossed in the current.

That’s it, that’s it.

Everything you need is beginning to find you.