Delta: An exchange

Kinship: Part 2

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An exchange: Kinship

Today, I am excited to publish Part 2 of An exchange, a side of the Poetry & Process newsletter where artists explore a topic through an exchange of their art.

This month’s exchange is on the topic of Kinship, a series of six pieces written over the past four months, poems from Brian Funke, author of Poetry & Process, and poems and art from Katharine Beckett Winship, author of Matters of Kinship. A newsletter will be published daily for six days, exploring different aspects of Kinship, each publication responding to and building on the prior piece from the collaborating artist. Read along and consider your own view of your place in the world among nature, animals, bureaucracy, development, and other humans.

I hope you enjoy this collaborative effort on Kinship.

Kinship: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

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Delta

Brian Funke

river delta

In the silence of dawn,
in the silence of a young cardinal’s chirp
and the silence of black coffee held
by lightening sky and a wall
of bright white hydrangeas,
she spoke with one drop
echoing through the cavernous sink,
echoing through,
echoing through,
echoing through
though I had asked her to hold her tongue.

Months and months of a sporadic shplink,
my wish that her reminder
would simply disappear unheeded,
her reminder that to restrain
takes bullied effort and a wrench,
containment this human idea of nature,
that her power should flow only
when a handle is turned by a fool hand,
that she will be held and remain tame
as she stands in a tank pushing down,
pushing down,
pushing down,
replenishing only when asked by my water glass,
that she will tread only where directed,
hidden away in pipes below the earth
like a shamed, distant cousin
who I have refused to consider for even a moment
after she toppled the levee in her honesty,
my fear of what she may do and
that we are blood relatives a truth
I cannot acknowledge,
my blood eighty percent her
and she evaporates when touched by the sun.

I know the story,
she disappears into thin air
then coats the lungs I so desperately need,
I breathe out and she forms thunderheads
that reign above all who pray for rain,
passing over the desert knowing she
is the source of all prayer,
passing over,
passing over,
passing over
and answering in a day’s long downpour
when I only asked for an inch,
enough to fill my rain barrel
but not my basement,
yet my basement lives among the roots
that she sees as benefactors of her generosity,
roots that thirst the way I do 
and have no quarrel in mutual entanglement,
me, a deposition of sediment and
she, the creator of we, the delta.

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Thank you for reading Part 2 of Kinship! Please leave a comment about what strikes you, speaks to you, or stirs in you while you read. Perhaps consider what relationship to the natural elements means to you.

Part 3 of the exchange will be published tomorrow!

May you settle into all around you…

Brian

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