You Don't Want to Be A River

by William Doreski

You don’t want to be a river
or if you must be a river
be the East River throbbing
with tidal weight between
Manhattan and Brooklyn where
indecent rich people cavort
with knees up and defenses down.

You would like to slosh over
your banks and pour into basements
and snuff electrical systems
and overwhelm pumps and blame
your malevolence on climate change.

But you don’t want to be a river.
You want to be an ocean greater
than the Pacific, a mass so huge
and tender that the moon will feel
your pain and relinquish tides
so you can lie peacefully flat.

The summer days ripen with kernels
of thunder and hail. Old sheds
lean into the wind and collapse.
Rain the color of your eyes insists
that we’re all rivers at heart.
We just haven’t learned to flow
as doggedly as surely we must.

You don’t want to be a river
but you’re already a river
like the rest of us, our currents
mingling and leeches patrolling
for the last tidbits of flesh.