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.