As always, we speak in
barely-threaded whorls
coiling toward the next
distant glint, the next
ether –no matter how
faintly it glows– and we
grip what reins we can
hold, but our speech slips the bridle,
intent on its own agency, its own
joyous digression,
keeping its range as it
loops and loops the way the
Mississippi starts as a stream with
no hint of eventual breadth
or meander, until its tributaries
part and braid their scattered ways,
quadrupling, and quadrupling again, only to
reconvene on the downstream
side of the sandbars and
twine themselves back into one
unit, one broad
valley full of that same
water, the river finally
existing in a single delta,
yielding itself to an alluvial
zone where sometimes we drown,
sometimes learn to swim.