RIVERS OUT

This poem is from THE DIMENSIONS OF THE MORNING originally published by Tom Kryss at BLACK RABBIT PRESS. San Francisco 1969.  In 2009 the book was re-published by RATTLESNAKE PRESS, POLLACK PINES, CA. as Rattlesnake reprint #1

RIVERS OUT

She was thinking about the sky again.

All the sky things: clouds, tall horses

with silver manes and breath the temper

of all winds, stars and their small brothers,

rain and its sister sea, jewels and the

hopes of endless halls, of fish in them.

She thought the sky around and the spirits

of earth came to her, colored robes whirling,

speaking strange tongues and fishing out the sky

with questions of themselves, clicking and hammering

like typewriters, like men in the streets tearing

holes, like gunbursts that slam into the page

and die there, never showing their ugly faces

to man as more than words.

The sky changed, the robes descended and

long rain, the time of unrest, the gathering

of ways to one way began and she was sea

in herself, her many arms depending.