To live here you must absolve
yourself of all pretense,
all worldly signs of wealth
or possession -- not that it's
hard, there's never been anything
here, really, save the damned
river -- there's nothing to mortgage
except what you do
to each each other, women and men,
seeking redemption in
each other's wrinkled flesh,
but it's the eyes that shame,
you can't escape, the deeper fear,
like a furtive skunk behind
the eyes, the mind embarrassed.
There's no privacy here, no
escape, the sensual and the
practical, the poverty of
a river dock, you fish for
trout and suckers, trap crayfish
in the claybanks, even pull
wild rice from the oxbows.
Even on our death beds
our friends and family
are too embarrassed
by the end to cry, to smile,
to hold our lifeless hands,
the skin sinking to bone,
oh the personal ownership of it!,
the selfishness!, the shame
of causing such a fuss!
And when we pass you wonder
What was all of this for?
This economy of feeling,
this abstention from
all things carnal, all the
empty hours, that damned
dying river? What value
remains from all this
fierce holding on?
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