Member-only story
low tide still
a free verse poem for riparian: the banks of our love
“the bone yards of fresh death startled us”
— from irreplaceable, Part 7
in Bucha, Ukraine
Tatyana Petrovna, 72
stands in her garden
three curled up bodies
bundled in winter coats
blue jeans and sneakers
lay on the dirt beside her
bloodied by bullets
some hands bound
some killed on bicycles
some while walking
down the street
all shot point blank
the implications make their way
into my bloodstream
a watershed
is how a single system of liquid
moves above and below ground
in Tiburon, California
i stand at the water’s edge
bunch grass curled around
my feet as the soft tide
goes and exposes what lies
beneath Richardson Bay
some sandpipers
some black-necked stilts
forage in mudflats
doing something real
some burrowing clams
some herring bones left
from the Cosco Bunsan oil spill
a watershed
is water parting
the rape of a country
the rape of a land
the rape of a people
the rape of a woman
the rape of an animal
the rape of a sea
all one gesture
to get close to water
is to get close to feeling
to get close to water
is to get close to the contagion
of exploitation that has been
washing up on every shore
for thousands of years
