Monday, May 02, 2022
River Poems
I had a hunch that the theme of "rivers" would bring out some good haiku, and I was right!
Everyone will love Jill Scoggins' work:
The Ohio shapes
my city north and west so
we sprawl south and east.
It shapes my state’s top,
too. Showing where Kentucky
stops, starts, begins, ends.
Rivers do that. Hard
stops that force-form our bound’ries.
We cross anyway.
River banks sharply
defined do not stop our real
need for connect'ness.
Bridges go over,
tunnels go under, vessels
carry us across.
Humans must breach their
own rivers. They find a way,
any way they can.
my city north and west so
we sprawl south and east.
It shapes my state’s top,
too. Showing where Kentucky
stops, starts, begins, ends.
Rivers do that. Hard
stops that force-form our bound’ries.
We cross anyway.
River banks sharply
defined do not stop our real
need for connect'ness.
Bridges go over,
tunnels go under, vessels
carry us across.
Humans must breach their
own rivers. They find a way,
any way they can.
My dad have a (valid) point to make (and I can vouch for the fact that their basement in quite prone to flooding):
The river is now
underground and out of sight,
shows up in basements
River overflows
its banks and ends up seeping
into our basements
The river is dry
early in growing season
the crops die of thirst
It's not the rivers
fault it's carbon emissions
and we are to blame.
Christine gets bonus points for excellent use of the word "twine":
Emerge, a trickle,
meander, like unraveled
twine, blood of the earth.
meander, like unraveled
twine, blood of the earth.
And My Tim(e) Has Come brought undeniable truth:
Rivers carry life
tugboats and canoes above
spawning fish below.
tugboats and canoes above
spawning fish below.
