The Millennial Pedestrian

The Rivers

Rain looks imminent, and has for days.
Still the sky withholds.
A mossy wind moves through the treetops
and mocking clouds squeeze drops of moisture on the dust.

Elsewhere families sit on rooftops
to watch the local river
rise past their living rooms
and carry off their furniture, their memories.

Rivers swell, contract, meander
into places where we’ve put
a house or farm or town.
We’ve made the deserts morph
into neurotic grids of green geometry,
but not for long.

One day the rigid black canals
will fill with sand. Farms will crowd
inside a plastic shell. Unsatisfied,
we’ll build a bigger shell around the planet,
enforce conditioned air upon
the Bedouin, the Inuit, the Sherpa.

Then clouds will rain at night upon
magnificent lawns. The daytimes will be radiant
with finely filtered sunshine,
the seasons will precisely start and end
on equinox and solstice.
The autumn foliage will flout its usual
flamboyance, an Oriental rug unrolling
down New England. Once every twenty years
Northeastern cities will experience
exciting blizzards. Indian Summer’s bittersweet reprise
will occur as scheduled and we’ll comment on it
hollowly, as if it were a train on time again.
But August won’t torment us with desired rain
that doesn’t fall. April won’t be cruel.

Outside the cities and the ruthless farms
the rivers will wind on. There we’ll go
to look at something wild, to feel
a strange rebelliousness
usurp our terrible tranquility
to make us wonder why
we feel such sadness here –
or if this could be joy.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 22nd, 2006.
It's part of the New Poems category.
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