Deep in the canyons, low in the canyons

where thunder presses the undersides

of rock, most of the water pillows white

against the granite face but enough

disappears to unmake and take you

from your blue trusty boat, from beside;

against; between; and through to under,

and underneath, though you completed

each sentence with the correct preposition,

keeping your eyes on the horizon’s eye,

not the undercuts or rock sieves,

in the melancholy and relief of knowing

you shall soon give up any thought

of knowing and understanding them.

For the river smacks your hesitate

and didn’t see and shows you something

altogether rocky bottom murky green

and if no head down, hip snap, twisting glide

of torso turns you over, you are trapped

and moving in the noisome river silence.

Try not to think thoughts no one should think

where her thoughts went and when she knew

for certain. Let all the muscles of the spine

memory and remember the turning over,

not the under and the underneath, not bronchioles

unbranching in the lungs, alveoli

bursting shut or her blood beating gasps

and sentences into a shuttered brain

where thunder presses and the water

bellows white, low in the canyons

of a city where the buildings have spiral

staircases encrusted with spiral seashells,

in the inside of disappear, the un-

wind of underneath and down there.

for Dale Herrick