Denise Low Poems

By the river years ago, recursive in memory, a
finite moment, the past ended. Future began.
...

Walking home I feel a presence following
and realize he is always there
that Native man with coal-black-hair who is
...

By the river years ago, recursive in memory, a
finite moment, the past ended. Future began.

The river flowed south. You were a man's face
floating among stones.

By a river in autumn, willow leaves were yellow
whisks in updrafts. We were not alone.

Cottonwood boles twisted against banks, turtles
dozed in the roots, bark slivered into water.

The river sounded the swish of its name. You
waded the Neosho as it meandered east.

Two sandhill cranes fly overhead. Their legs
stretch straight behind as they swim through air.
Their grace is the river's.

No one saw flood-seined silt, gravel, broken
mussel pearls. I stayed, you left.

By the river I met you each day. I meet you each
day. I will be meeting you in invariant futures.

By the river leaves turn. Mud cracks pentagonal
shapes. You return and leave. The river remains.

By the river I was a child, I am grown. I remember
water pooled, not moving.
...

Live jazz at El Fresco is one guy, electric plinks,
until he turns off the switch, closes his eyes,

and warbles a boy's tenor, wood-flute tones,
pure séance hymns from before Christians.

Rowdies at the bar stop fighting and stare
as seawater washes through the room,

seeping through floorboards to serpent dens.
The chorus stirs spirits from family lore.

Desmond, Big Miller, James MackGehee—
all rise from steerage and sing with the lords.

Next performance is a poet reciting,
"The Luck of the Irish," blue eyes snapping:

"Once I journeyed to the Cliffs of Moher."
I follow him to a rocky precipice, pause,

then jump to dizzy foam tides below, fall,
keep falling into this slow, heartbreaking solo.
...

I look through glass and see a young woman

of twenty, washing dishes, and the window
turns into a painting. She is myself thirty years ago.
She holds the same blue bowls and brass teapot
I still own. I see her outline against lamplight;
she knows only her side of the pane. The porch
where I stand is empty. Sunlight fades. I hear
water run in the sink as she lowers her head,
blind to the future. She does not imagine I exist.

I step forward for a better look and she dissolves

into lumber and paint. A gate I passed through
to the next life loses shape. Once more I stand
squared into the present, among maple trees
and scissor-tailed birds, in a garden, almost
a mother to that faint, distant woman.
...