After Dark

She is thinking of the delta

shimmering with tidal and fresh water urgings

as his hand opens on the flat

of her breast bone. So much sediment

there, the Mississippi argues its way

through the bayous, pausing for the ibis,

the tall-legged cypress, the heron

that cannot decide, walking backwards,

it seems, while moving ahead.

A million years of water

in which sturgeon, carp and crustacean

sink and rise with the leaves

of the ancient willow,

half-dissolved root, pungent bone.

In this ambiguous world, both fluid

and firm, she drifts between the blurry borders

of the current, and beyond,

through cottonwood nebulas, pollen, and siftings

of alluvial plain, admitting

love can exceed our intentions,

those levees built against flooding.

But mainly she is struck

by its patient, persistent nature.

The constant nibbling of the river

like a fiddler crab

whose tiny legs (tickling like his beard)

weaken a soft bank until, thunder from afar,

it collapses into water.