The River, Stolen Word Poem from Carolyn Forche's "Travel Papers"

We halted where

the river, thick with freshwater whitefish, vendace,

bulged under arching birchwood

limbs before stretching out again, fated for the sea.

We built a fire

from half-soft wood where ants once lived –

ate silently, then

hung our tarp between two sturdy oaks. Outside

was only another roof. We, ourselves –

Not so much within

as under, dreaming,

the earth beneath snow when spring begins,

articulation of the body visible.

The trail we left behind

was kissed with yellow gorse

and pea-green fronds.

We found a naked patch, burnt

by a still pond, scarred with ash, pearled with feral swans.

And now, weary, birch-lined,

we set up camp by the river you say reminds you of Dresden,

the Elbe river armored

in green, infested with boats in afternoon

heavy with their passing

loads of freight

bound for Prague or Torgau, (or Budapest

for that matter, since all you saw was disappearing

hulls behind the hunched backs of fields).

-

When we met, in America,

we recognized each other

for that hungry look of refugees in another world.

You had become, as everything uprooted becomes,

a knitted collection of skeletons.

We ducked under the storefront awning, soaked;

when you saw my face you pushed our way through to the stove.

I remember your eyes were black as basalt

not cooled, shot

with blood like particles

still glowing. You were one

day from drowning, then.

One day from taking

the chance that there was something other

than this bog.

We wondered, afterward, if our darkness was imaginary;

if even the missing names in the registry

were some foolish joke, or ghost

of a story someone wrote in prison

and scrawled on a stray sheet of paper.

Because, why else the lilies?

How else could men carve the frieze?

We had to believe this was hand-blown,

not something God let drop

to crack with a snap of twigs

or breaking glass.

After winter, we thought those things. Such

damp and heavy coats we peeled

from us!

I heard the change in your voice

as told me you saw a morning glory bloom

and fill with bees

one after the other that morning. Your

wonder at the unknown,

the bare child of you,

decided there was something to be lived.

We signed papers by July, and you

said you were (and you still are),

sad I could never meet your mother.

You felt the calluses on my hand,

and I knew without words.

But now we stretch out under moonlight.

Hoping against rain, and not –

Hoping rather that our walls of one window

will open into something wider still. A dream

I had on our first night back –

you told me I was right – said rain was coming.

We wind

our way to Poland, Gdynia instead

of Krakow.

It seemed

as if twilight

was thick with clouds

of swifts.

We held

a ceremony for meteors under

the sky in August. Perseids

ripe, and dripping of time.

Why don’t we take the road?

You pointed to the river: there –

you said, was the road –