Current
Issue
Volume 12.2
Clayton Adam Clark
—
Clayton Adam Clark
When naming marks need or want
to return to a place, what is it
we desire from a river called ugly
water or ugly fishes, depending who
you ask? What was it called first or before,
and/or how could you call it now, north-
flowing and filthy still with farm runoff,
the tires and beer cans sunk like bed stones?
Idling a canoe midstream is the place
to watch the water take and take
from the riverside, filling up on clay
gnawed from beneath the trees,
their roots exposed to sunlight. Or am I
seeing more than one body in a place
they aren’t? When transpiration is a process
of trees drawing up river and rain
that saturates the bank to replace what
water the summer sun evaporated
from their leaves, then we might
say there’s no good way to stay
the same. It’s all a matter of time
before the riverside tree, by flood
or gravity, enters the river, which is
to become it, which is to become the place
on a river where turtles take in the sun.
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