Think of eighth grade and the globe and
Miss Wakefield and all the names
you mouthed to memory: Tigris, Euphrates,
Upper Nile, Lower, Dnieper, Don, Yangtze,
Amazon, Danube, Ganges, Congo, Mekong,
Mississippi, Missouri, Yukon, Indus,
Colorado. Then the boats and barges, the bathing,
the scrubbing of bedding, of sari and huipil
and cheongsam. Salmon. Sturgeon. Crocodiles.
Catfish. Carp. Beaver. Hippos. Herons.
Sandpipers. Osprey. Blue flag and lotus
and cattails. So much we do not
know, and now the not-knowing swells. Now
surges: heat, drought, flooding, the gouging
out of new channels, algae blooms, dead
zones, cyanide, a squeeze of oxygen that cannot
help but kill these fish, these. And still
we yearn to believe that rivers never
end, tributaries to oceans that welcome
fresh water. We long for rushing, for the current
as emblem of a life that cannot be
grasped. We declare you person, Klamath,
Whanganui, Rio Atrato, our turn to serve,
grant the rivers we claim to love the right
to flow free from our heavy hand, the right to flourish.
This poem first appeared in Write to the River, Friends of the Mississippi River (2019).
—
Suzanne Swanson is a retired perinatal psychologist and author of House of Music and What Other Worlds: Postpartum Poems. Winner of the Loft Mentor Series, Suzanne helped to found Laurel Poetry Collective. Recent poems have appeared in EcoTheo Review, Terrain.org, The Hopper and West Trade Review. In 2022, she co-edited the chapbook, All You Need Is One Avocado. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Suzanne is happiest near big water.
