Genealogy Poem by Jennifer Chang

This stream took a shorter course—
a thread of water that makes oasis
out of mud, in pooling,
does not aspire to lake. To river, leave

the forest, the clamorous wild.
I cannot. Wherever I am,
I am here, nonsensical, rhapsodic,
stock-still as the trees. Trickling

never floods, furrows its meager path
through the forest floor.
There will always be a root
too thirsty, moss that only swallows

and spreads. Primordial home, I am dying
from love of you. Were I tuber or quillwort,
the last layer of leaves that starts the dirt
or the meekest pond,

I would absorb everything.
I would drown. Water makes song
of erratic forms, and I hear the living
push back branches, wander off trail.