After years of watching a brick-lined horizon,

I returned to the river’s tattered body, listened

for a murmur to surface, to remind me

that hope once abandoned can be regained.

 

There were no flowers along the riverbank,

no ducks resting in the mud, only a shadow

cast by the highway overpass and some crows

scurrying about the sidewalk for crumbs.

 

What might have been a prayer

was a boat gurgling in the distance,

and the murky water veiled those pleas

the history books obscure as when numbers

 

steal prisoners’ names. I waited to see

if spirits would make themselves known

in the metronome of water carving land,

but the river remained a river, nothing more.  

 

I scooped a handful of sand, rubbed it

between my palms until they chafed.

I held a stone like ice to my lips and sank

my feet into the silt until they numbed.

 

I wish I could say the gestures changed me,

or that the city was made whole for a moment

by this act of veneration, in my willingness to hold

the river as a sacramental in a penitent’s hand.

 

Turning from the water, I saw a police caravan

block several downtown streets without fanfare.

The silence spread its smoke between buildings

and clung to my skin a stench I could not shake.