…over a rain barrel
shifting this torrent
of trepidation
dam wall bracing
the river
tension fractures
leaking pressure
losing emotion
letting steam

we are survivors
we are antideluvian
descendants
of swimmers
who kept head
above water
sailing their way
over triangular Atlantic

we are risers
buoyed by insight
floating somewhere
above immediate circumstance
of too much information
too little filtration
siphoning heavy metal toxin
and artificial impurity
from what was once
the substance of life

we are trying only
to make it out alive
before the sharks
smell blood in ocean
we are open plains
pending irrigation
parched throats
sensing dehydration
all the water in the world
and not a drop to drink
all the knowledge
at your fingertips
is not enough to think

we are breathing
on the brink
of being seized
by submersion
we are unbroken sod
sown with the seeds
of subversion
on the verge
of being supplanted
if we don’t
overturn the Earth
hoe this hard row
and overthrow the dirt
dog paddle through
the overflow of work

for both flood and wild fire
bring elemental renewal
one charred carbon matter
the other Nile River sediment
whose bank gave us a settlement

if we would sense the deluge flowing
we might dampen its effect
and channel potential destructive energy
into the building of what lives next.