I find this river on which I drift

to be a combination of confusing confluences .

Its tributaries, its ox-bows,

carry old-back-waters into the current carrying me now,

to reappear, like unreconciled conflicts,

to deepen the rivers treacherous depths

or run me up into its shallows and shoals,

push me onto its sand-bars and snags.

It reaches out to grab me, to run me aground.

And, oh! the rush of wild, white-waters!

The raucous maze of massive boulders

and sharp shards of stones like swords,

protruding tree trunks and branches like hidden pun-jabs ,

stretching to puncture, to impale my flimsy raft,

spilling what it carries and me,

sucking all down into its deeps.

And then the slow sluggish drifts across its wide spaces.

Neither shore seen in the pouring rain nor in the early morning mists.

Like a becalmed sailor on a great, flat sea,

where there is no remedy

but to drift and wait for a begged-for-breeze to flow with.

And through all this,

I know nothing of what waits

beyond the undredged channels at its mouth.

Just the unfathomable sea?

Or whether a turning tide rises,

moving on to somewhere, maybe.

Or merely the end of me.