Caddo River Elegy

At least 16 people, including some children, were killed Friday after flash floods swept through their remote Arkansas campsites. . . .

—abcnews.com, June 11, 2010

In the hot dark we lay like fishes —     wet & nosing one another at the gills. In my gut an old bullfrog thwumped.     With a whine & haw a locust sawed at my night heart’s     moorings. In the earth, I knew, were ancient bones, on the earth were my new bones.     I rolled & nosed my yeasty mother, rolled & nosed my bleary, beery father.     I forgot exactly where I ended, where the rest began. As if water     all around us. As if I were already water I slid that night into their nostrils,     into the heave & hollow of their lungs — ran every crook, slew, & swerve of them,     by flapping hearts was driven clean into squinched arterioles. God,     I loved their bodies. Back-to-belly in the tent we lay like fish & lipped the salt     rising from our slick skins. What I wouldn’t give, I thought then, to never sleep but wake,     & into each diminishing minute, wake again. Yet, as it does, sleep took me,

    though it took me to the day before the night, to a slow pool of the Caddo River,     where with leeches I caught three shiners, to that bramble where the blackberries     bruised & ran with even the lightest finger, to the slough where I squatted down     & watched a turtle blow & settle in the mud until but for his eyes he was mud.     Baby was sick & the blowflies sticky, so mother put her in the tent,     where she slept all day & only squalled when I leaned kindling sticks     against a stump & snapped them with my boot. At dinner we fried the shiners     in peanut grease. Boiled greens with tomatoes & bones. Not even mother waited     for a bowl, & spoon after spoon we slurped ice milk straight from the old crank jug.     It hurt my teeth it was so cold & good. We scrubbed with sand, unlaced our boots,     & then lay down like a row of fishes in the tent. Dreaming of the good day past, the water came

    & took us & we were killed. You might think there would be a buoying,     there was no buoying. Like the bad hand of God water slammed us down, pinned us     to the earth & snapped our every rib. Oh, how does God or anyone bear day     & night? I tell you if this world is a good father’s sloping shoulder,     the stink of river & ripe blackberries. If this world is a wall of killing water,     a man reaching into the flood trees for the small & tangled bodies —     then goddamn it, then you best grieve & eat it. A muddy bank of the Caddo River     is where I’m dreaming now, where a vole snouts through my throat, where a tree frog’s scream     fills my heart’s dark riffle.