And the Place Was Water

^{With lines from Lorine Niedecker’s Collected Works}

Are you from here? It’s been difficult 
because my heart is weak 
and schools of leaves past lonely piers 
on their way to water 
where my brother lives
in Jefferson. Where the spring 
looms also in phonographic deep song 

on a level with the water. Somedays, 
I can barely breathe or push 
thru marsh to meet my family 
for the holidays. In water, nearly landless, 
it’s like the medicine stopped working 
in the soft still-water 
twilight. I saw it happening, the rain 

came down in sheets. I’ve had this 
aching in my wrists for years. There’s something 
in the water like a flower will devour 
water. Because my blood 
is thin, I sink to water-death 
behind my house and try to keep a garden. 
How often do you see your children? 

Every morning I walk alone 
around the block and count my blessings.
It isn’t like when we were young, 
the cold-water-business of the water, 
the weather, less predictable 
in water glass descending scale. 
My throat is dry. I think they called your name.