JEANETTE POWERS

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

Some Quick of Hope

the river is sweet tea and way high
and although it’s one hundred and five
the humidity makes it feel like hell blew through
and found it couldn’t take the heat

but the water is cold from last night’s hard rain
and the only way to survive getting in
is to do it all at once, surrender with breath held
and this is how we dive in and come up again

the river is for letting go the sweat of the cage
is the place for inventing what comes next
and here is where we come together to decide
how and what we name the unknown future

why the cost of starting over is so steep
and who the ghosts keep haunting day in and out
while the current keeps each of every us
newly touched and baptized clean

there’s no two ways around this river
only one way down and no way out
before we cross her with pennied eyes
to some sort of wet heaven we haven’t yet dreamed