The Map of Water

JOHN woops

JOHN WOODS

THE MAP OF WATER

First the sandbar dipped; then winter's

Thatch of twigs fell down. It was night

All week upriver; rain and its hints

Darkened dirt until it ran.

Brown foam bloomed around the snags.

What came up in Billy's barn?

A raft of corncobs and a slickered rat.

What lay down in Billy's field?

A big brown udder of a river.

Mr. Arnold's wheat went under next.

Yesterday, a shoot of water entered,

Hogging the corncrib, taking all room.

Now the river wrinkles in the porchswing,

Driftwood clusters at the pasture gate,

And the woodpile rises off somewhere.

All the light and loose, yea, has risen.

The map is plunging under, the bridge is down,

The operator holds a conch of seas.

And on the rooftops of the sinking world,

We turn from one another; for love and all

Its selfish groupings close us in ourselves:

The nail of sex we drove into our thigh;

Home, that didn't fail us soon enough;

And pride, on which we squatted, grunting images.

But now we look inside, and in the flood

We see the glowing freeways of the mind.