Not About This
It is not about the classic rivers
of mythology, not about Acheron,
river of woe with its lines of unemployed
holding their migraines in their hands.
Or Cocytus, river of lamentation
where the elderly have gone
to grieve their condition.
It cannot be this.
Not the river of fire,
the lava flowing from another volcanic shudder
into the homes of the living & the dead,
& into the stories of new generations.
For these are byproducts,
shining as they are-
It is not about the river of forgetfulness,
inviting as the night visits the tortured mind.
No, not this, or the waters of hate
& the butchered bodies stacked along shorelines
& the lost women trying to find their sons,
or the river of return,
not the red river of consolation
wound about the heart
& through the vineyards,
or how our loves came to be,
then left us again to ourselves.
It is not about the oldest & saddest river,
the river of time, with flashes of metallic film
sliding by, gathering momentum
& the sufaces of faces,
the faces of phantoms,
(I have seen myself among them.)
It cannot be about theology,
or if it is, it is the theology of celestial mechanics,
the giant narrative of everything,
the source of energy, (& its forms,)
crunching itself out through the heavens.
poem by Michael Gessner
Added by Poetry Lover
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