the river back home

And when I started out running, I took the only possible route
the route through the maples, heavy now as they are with colour
carrying their burdens delicately and sometimes losing, a leaf
here and there fluttering to the ground like a secret sigh so tired -
this route because it reminds me of the ravine behind our houses
where our parents said not to play without supervision

where the river stood at the bottom
 with wide open arms, ready to catch and carry where
dirt rock leaf padded our noises while we giggled rolled down the side when
the ground was there without hesitation I took the leap
and the ground was there       there was no such thing
 as hesitation

The path here is a lie lies straight and curved and flat but
I can hear the sirens of the city in here they seem
more frantic, wailing, all the trees pulling       inward hugging           their branches to the ground
as if these bright colours these reds and yellows are a scream a bullet
shot in the sky and then blood spilling, the blood of god
shaped to the vein of a leaf, fallen loose and now curled, a fist on the ground
that my foot crushes underneath. I exhale

Counting my rhythm to stop from breathing too hard to stop from
thinking about sirens and even when I was a kid, fish were dead on the banks
of that river.

We’d smell it long before we’d stumble upon it and I
was always shocked, would stutter in my step and then lower myself to look
into such a naked eye I was uncomfortable with the staring but sad because
this was all that was left, something half-picked clean by birds and flies
dead on the bank and the river just rushing past in a hurried commute to get to
bigger things and what if the ocean wasn’t enough that big huge gulp
swallowing again and again to get that lump out of the back
of my throat: even in blue skies even here
there are fish dead on the banks and the river wasn’t always waiting but was sometimes
swollen and brown with the mud of erosion

            
            And when we’d climb home we would run
            up the hill and reach for young trees to take their thin branches
            so slender like a pianist’s hand hardly there to hold on to
            and sometimes the branches the roots would slip, the let go the
            cannot hold on anymore, and we’d fall against the banks heaving
            breath like an insult a bone cracking somewhere deep inside
            the shell of fear being hacked so the cracks showed just a bit more

                       

            And the willows weep near the river their roots
            tearing up concrete looking for more space, not knowing that kind of thirst
           can never be quenched

Not knowing that the concrete is a lie lies straight curved and flat, twisting like a path
snaking through the woods, long and thin as a lie you started when you were young and now
can’t get out of.