I don’t know about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable…
—T.S. Eliot, “The Dry Salvages” from Four Quartets
Rio Grande, Rio Bravo Dirge
Thomas: It’s true, you don’t know
about gods beaten and worn
like the space left between
paired jigsaw puzzle pieces
where a child has tried
and tried to force
the wrong piece in;
you might’ve known about
gods who linger, who know
lightning bolts, who know bargains
and carry swords, but I think you
lacked the capacity to notice
their lack of capacity
to harbor and be a hand
to shade our eyes; shaded now,
you don’t know and died
not knowing the slosh of gods
and the dark gleam of gods
that reflect clean off badges
hot over paid hearts.
This river god who rears and waits,
in place like a door left ajar,
god that moves and darkens—
this is not a being of your thoughts.
Water Dirge
Tom: Do you not know that,
before boundaries were decided
between men separating Mexico
and the U.S., there was water?
Before the city lights made us
forget the stars, and before the desert
was made a road, and before people crammed
into trucks and were called cargo,
called nothing back there, officer,
there was water? Do you think
water is an argument waged
between two gods?
Think, where I believe,
water is blood spilt
between two gods?
Do you think as I do
that I might mean split
and not spilt?
Do you know much
about the silence,
so much like a river,
when I’ve been seen as
sullen, untamed, and intractable—
Nueces River Dirge
Tommy: Is your strong brown god
also this chosen river, split from brother
by distance and legislation,
river that empties into Corpus
Christi Bay? No, I know you spoke
of the Ohio, and I know that river, too.
But what would you call
the hard waters of my home city?
What blessings for us who
offer up nothing but faces
can you think of? What looks back
when we hold water in our hands
and wait, a moment of dark mirror—
that we are then made in the image
of what we cannot utter? That we
are lost in clouded lifelines
as we stand outside a door
we’ve had no hand in making?
Corpus Dirge (December 2016)
T: When the water was contaminated
in Corpus I did not consider gods,
did not know them or think them
able to help my family who
already had bottled water in bulk,
my mother who made sure
her sons didn’t drink
from the tap, who attempted
to shower with bottled water
a few times only to have
to give up, her arms giving out
after double shifts of work. When
the water was tainted I took
the time to look up maps, traced
by zip code the neighborhoods cut
off from water, noted that where
they lived, my family would live
without service for some time.
Same for the neighborhoods
we used to live in, from Leopard
to Greenwood, and yet water
had been restored to areas
I never saw until I had started
driving and would detour
through ritzy residentials,
or so they seemed at sixteen.
When it was tainted, I knew water
had given off light
like roads made of glass
before I was born,
knew that water bore
and took in all that fell
long before I’d fallen off
the map I traced over trying
to think and find any thin
reassurance. When the water
was tainted, it remained water
and would remain water,
and all the words wearing down
in meaning are my family
history, are part of my story—
Mr. Eliot, before I was born
you wrote about a strong brown god
but what are gods when there is water
in rivers who have nothing to do
with what isn’t already part of them?
If the river is within us, then why
did I fear it killing those I cared for?
Why do gods—beyond belief,
knowledge, and thought—scrawl
out of me, awkward, reverent,
and dying?