Travelers Welcome

Travelers Welcome

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

OVERFLOWING YOUR BANKS

by John Grey

You say you flooded tears  
so where’s the brown water,
the swirls and eddies
up and down your blue carpet.
You want me to believe
your pain comes up to waist-level,
that the current’s too strong to swim against
and even wading is futile.
You say flood
and I think impossible swelling,
cars floating, coffins uprooted,
people on rooftops
with a few choice possessions,
not someone in a rocking chair,
face dry as moon rock.
I don’t hear a thing in your whining
about the barber shop boarded up,
farmers hustling cows
to the top of the hills.
Your life wants to believe
there’s no crops this year,
not a soybean, an ear of coin,
that the best way of moving on from here
is at the helm of a canoe.
It wants to hear how many died,
how many vowed not to return to this town.
A real flood and you’d be drowning by this.
A real flood and rescue would be one of my options.

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