Thirst
(a direction for all the decisions)
Start with the thirst
the deep well you have been forgetting,
ancient and ready to be soaked without shame
the well your grandmothers dug for you
the reservoir carved and cared for
by the people your ancestors betrayed
your thirst is their faithfulness
undeterred from believing:
there are no strangers here.
Thirst is the thing
that remembers who you are
before the land, the hard rock, your
body stiff and unyielding –
hungry for canyons, mountains,
oxbow lakes, whole oceans of whales
and sea lions, and even the
bitter stories of slave ships and
refugees refused at the shore –
The thirst can hold it all,
untellable tales of water coming
before the ground is ready,
water rising without recourse
stories also of creation and construction
the pot boiling for tea, and dinner,
warm washcloths, and
the first starts
of a seedling in the spring -
The thirst tastes the air,
knows the sky, and the
rain before it comes, and
sets in motion
the leap off the ledge
of the dock, freedom bound
into the startling cold,
and the way the
breath leaves, and returns
like the sense that you are small
and also not unlike
late summer monsoons
always on the verge of
danger, and
undoing it all –
The thirst says
we are soft in these bodies
part river, flowing with the browns,
the cutbows, the immigrant geese,
sometimes too much,
and risk-ready,
part creek trickling for miles underground,
the thirst knows there is a way
to turn every breaking thing
into beauty, to flush
the wound clean
and begin the healing, again
Thirst is what is possible
when we tend to the wanting
of all the world, the generations, the stars
starting
with
your
one,
dry
mouth,
and the reaching for the glass,
the pouring,
and the filling,
the lifting to
your tongue,
and the drinking in
until you are
drenched
in life
