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One Hundred Percent

Turbid
The river is turbid today
this moment feels the same
Tomorrow’s forecast murky
and overhead
a ropy underbelly of cloud
pinkens with our f bombs
wears them as honor badge.
One hundred percent

 Ever notice how
rivers cut to the chase?
We say inundate but it’s really a full body press.
Our angry rumblings
an envious companion.
Envy, imitation, the highest
form of flattery, I hear.
I watch us roil to a slow boil.
Clearing channels for
“hell hath no fury” to break loose!
We congregate in divine tempest.
Been building for ages,
like Katrina and Rita
Irma and Sandy
Florence

Storm surge and flooding
the mighty debridement
And holy is the rancor
that ochers the water.
The rivers are ready.
The oceans have held worse,
have carried more.
One hundred percent.
Castaways bereft make new lives 
if they don’t drown in the trauma
and the abuse and the shame.

Survivors as persons who continue to function
even prosper in spite of hardships
opposition, setbacks,
cat briars, ridicule,
mad dogs and windbags.

Survivors make keen sentries,
And compassionate consolers.
Let their witness be
farsighted as
bristle-cone pines
horseshoe crabs
tardigrades - the real deals.

The real deal - nothing as
genuine and honest as
survivor voice and volition,
a force of nature
imprinted, indelible and resonant

Here was survivor as patriot
as testimony
as confluence.
Her indelible recollection rung
in cacophony with prior
testimonies and confluences.
She turned us to stone
so we could fly.

If witness is the weft
of our red blanket,
fury is the weave.  Never mind
that it only covers our laps,
we have some ass kicking to do.

This pregnant chronicle is
nested in shells of heartache
and righteous upset
like a matryoshka doll.
River says let it all
fray away to sediment,
let the sentiment settle
and build a new bed.
One hundred percent.

She had carried those things like a soldier
until she needed two front doors
to accommodate their release
or escape or both.
She delivered her sediment,
left a mile of sentiment on the senate floor
I dab her dirt and tears between my toes,
put aside my exasperation.

And so we know
without a doubt
what churns to confidence
what ebbs as reciprocity
what rises in a billion woman flood
can revive the garden,
the forest,
the deep blue sea.
We carry it now and we always have.
One hundred percent.







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