Poem: Luck of the Divide

Worrying the hem of solitude I walk along the creek
bank dodging trailside miter, sword, thorn
and brood on memory and emotion as it applies
to water. I wonder, does Shot Pouch Creek smell
the ocean in this evening’s rain, pick
up its pace, imagining every delicious detail of the long-anticipated
watery reunion with lover? Only
to be plummeted
back to reality, its eddying, ancient
envy of Spout Creek—that nothing, that brook that gets to run
and stream with Savage, Alsea, and, soon, now, open ocean freedom.
Poor Shot Pouch, condemned to
the well-behaved humdrum
of Tum Tum to Mary’s River,
then the slog of the Willamette. Just the luck
of the divide,
the slope, the shed,
the draw
of this wrinkled
land
and twisting rivers. I wonder.

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