I.

I had seen enough of love
to carry it inside and out.
Unfairly, we survive the grief
of treachery, love each other more,
but love's bereft now of the light
we saw through liquid leaves and limbs.

II.

Some rocks were up
in the sun, warming
lying snakes at their leisure,
but in the coldest runs
where depth and speed conspire, confuse,
and where my blue-veined ankles
repeatedly forethought their sudden shattering,
where the toys of currents were the same--
twigs, silt, some trash, and salamanders sticking
to cracks and plains beneath
the ridden surfaces, in strenuous flexes
of water like inescapable sound,
some dark outcry seemed true and right. But
friends were present, shy, quiet
by nature.

III.

For you and me, the time of our worst passing
grew itself without my knowing. It warped
and bulged like plastic bags snagged, filling,
like earthquakes full of pipes
and all the cables wrapped with glass,
or metal or paper or whatever stockholders'
latest prayers could driftingly inspire.
(Love might yet be sure as stone
or the cold rugged water.)

IV.

This year I hurt
my ankle, bruised the point of my elbow,
and almost broke my spine
chasing an unmoored Coke bottle
littering the carefully wild scenery.
These several things seem alive,
a community waiting
to move. Like earth-gnomes mossed-over
for their pause, apples of the underground
coaxed, snaked upward, hard
coffins in a flood of driven cold--
so much purposeful going of the river,
the utter possession of gravity.

--by Robert W. Hill