The A to Z Challenge interrupted my series of chapbook poems just before I came to the last poem in my chapbook, the one from which the title is taken. Here is the last of the previously published poems in the collection.
The River
The clinic door clicks behind me—
yes, it’s still unlocked.
The smell of fresh water
breathes me to the open windowwhere I let down my handmade rope
made of bandages knotted together,
and lower myself to the bank
where the reeds grow in the mud.A reed raft and a reed flute—
both useful in their hollowness.
I sink my toes in the silt,
wade into the blackness.Craft and current carry me.
The less I struggle,
the more the river takes me
where I want to go.
I like the new title of this poem, but I still think of this poem by its working title, “Surrender.” Some readers see the ending of this poem as ominous, but it’s not intended that way. It’s intended to show an act of acceptance, of allowing someone to go where the flow of the river will take them.
This poem was first published by Hospital Drive in 2013. Unfortunately, the website for that journal no longer exists, but I saved the image that the journal chose to go with the poem.
A Collision of Ideas
I began writing it as a fantasy escape poem, similar to “Mend My Life,” but at the time I wrote this poem, I had been reading the Tao Te Ching, and I was fascinated by the concept of value in emptiness. A poem is a container for collisions. The collision of ideas brought a larger context to the poem, beyond the wish to escape. It felt like a fitting final poem for the collection.
