{ Adrienne J. Odasso: Five Times I Lived by Water. }

[delga]

Five Times I Lived by Water
by Adrienne J. Odasso

1. Cuyahoga

My father claims that the river caught fire
on the night I was born. My research suggests
that he is either lying or misremembers
and has conflated the strange event
with my slow coming. Whenever I ask
my mother, she says that I burned
worse than any brand on my sluggish way
into artificial light. I wonder
if the truth lies somewhere in between:
that the river caught fire at the sight
of my arrival, lent my eyes its gleam.



2. North Fork

Too slight to be a river, yet too large
to seem a creek. My grandfather led me
close by the water, explained the trick
of keeping firm footing out in the deep.
I proved a fast fisher of monsters
inside the first hour. One after another,
sunfish and trout, speckled catfish and chubs
foundered hungry on my hooks. We'd keep
only the ones deemed best for eating.
As for the rest, they'd earned their living,
having taught me how true weakness looks.



3. Charles

At least this place, too, has blue herons
and kingfishers that dive from shopping cart
to weed-bed, from bicycle part to pier
before rising again. I'll stay with you
here in this soft, polluted silence till
all the city sinks and water rises
past our door. After that, I'm uncertain
of where I will go. The ocean is far
from us, but nearer than it was when first
I came. Before I leave, I have one last
boon to ask, and it's this: return my name.



4. Ouse

I could hate this country for giving me
something to love—spired, frigid ruins
that fit my mind's frail landscape like a glove.
I'm told that her dear cousin, Mother Thames,
yields up pipe-stems and pots, even bodies
belonging to souls that London forgot.
For now, I'm where I am, biding my time
until our own tame river turns to flood,
swallows the high turrets' stones, even burns
my too-long dulled eyes with waves of blood.



5. Aire

I'm telling my father that the river
has turned to ice overnight, become
a landing hazard to every gull
within a twenty-mile radius.
If I could only see her smile, I'd tell
my mother what it looks like when they slide
in a blur of dull feathers. This is us,
my grandfather and me, separated
by fish-killing distance. My heart is full
like the ocean that bore me, or the hull
of this steamship, ablaze with remembrance.