I speak to you like many rivers
Emptying from the heart
This is I know unattractive in a man
Yet when I speak to you in a dialect like wire
Those uneasy words meant to weaken the knees
You will know there’s nothing left to abstract
That’s not like an idea both vague & elemental
As in say the idea of us which is so
Like the conjugation of rivers
Simply at the heart of the matter
These beds of stone & shale giving up giving
Way to every senseless & untimely current
Of the wild convicted flesh
Many Rivers
David St. John
David St. John is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose and the coeditor of American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of the New Poem. He is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
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