We, Like Rivers
By Benjamin Faro
Posted on
Take the water. Touch it at the rim. The
Amazon. The Mississippi. Flowing east and
south until they empty into the same ocean,
becoming the same body. Springs and
trickles, tributaries bringing wisdom, life, and
over time maturing into continental
waterways, spilling over banks that cradled
them like the darling sips they were.
Fertilizing floodplains to feed the hungry
masses. Turning forests into lakes, where
mystic dolphins twist through roots and
murk, offering fertility—the birth of your
imagination, the future to behold. And the
water knows itself until it doesn’t: delta
meaning change. Then, El Niño, heavy, pulls.
Sucks up the humpbacks’ sighs, and the rivers
once again are cumulus, raining into tiny
ponds a mountain range away, and you pack
the car with everything you need to make the
drive out west, because that is where you’re
going, and this you know for sure.