“When you strike water / you strike your own face”
‑ ‘The Rope’ from Vicki Raymond’s Franklin River suite
6.30am: I wake debating with myself
about the eco changes of rivers.
Somnolence of quiet flow at the curve
where I meditate versus
the rush of dam flow
for our power needs.
Here is the captured flow
in my tap for morning coffee,
the shower heads warm therapy.
The Forth flows from the Pelion,
over seven dams, under bridges
of steel
and wood, over limestone,
around my toes, past platypus burrow,
along grass verges,
around trout, over litter
and cattle corpse, by power stations,
into puddles,
into the mouths of small creatures,
past village parks, under fog
and dew, over
round white pebbles,
by barely sealed roads,
through sewerage pipes,
into a wide sandy bay.
Quick, quick, slow,
a pluck on violin strings.
The river is looking confused at the
U-turn, escaping into clay banks
or eddying about in circles driving
the fish crazy in its dance.
Will we drink that stir of crazy
when it meets our dinner plate as salmon?
We are all river,
the damp within us,
the 60% wetness we drank
in bucket loads or stole
from the moist sky
before it could reach another flow.
I can feel fish scales in my skin,
toxins in my blood.
When I melt, I am water,
womb, snow milk, sun stream—
a steamy down drift, a polished bone.