Confluence (Poem)

Sometimes I wish I was less water.

Always spilling,

filling,

falling,

pouring,

bending,

twisting,

my mass around,

under,

over,

behind,

inside,

more permanently shaped things,

a language of separation and conflux,

as I split and merge into thousands of tiny rivulets to spare the planted their place.

Or a rushing to fill,

to suspend the accumulation of my atoms into the shape that is both my own and yet not. For though I penetrate every intimate corner,

myself a constant perfusion of the open spaces of other forms,

my amorphous anatomy is easily slid from one vessel to another.

Though there are quiet times of glacial rigidity where waters slow,

the floe beneath continues,

bearing its frozen burden along,

until proximate warmth makes me again shapeless.

A river,

a swamp,

contorting

to the curves of stone and mountain,

always jetting away from the source,

in search of the mouth,

in search of the place where the river can disappear into the sea.

The confluence

where water finally rests.

bvk, 2019