Sharks in the Rivers

by Ada Limon

So, I keep you— lost and found—surrounded by the sweet barbed wire of tumbled limbs until you are tough enough to kick through the gate, break it, knock over the water trough and go mean-wild again.

This is the way the world runs through us, its instruments of moon- water and hangnails of hope. River, river, listen, I understand the urgency.

We are vine and hummingbird, eucalyptus root and centipede, junco and blue-belly lizard. (And sometimes the drowned deer, and sometimes the trapped opossum, the wayward dog, the wayward dog.)

There is one low, leaning heart-shaped globe left and dearest, can you tell, I am trying to love you less.

sound, the tongue taste of natural color, the fat birds on trees? She is obliged to the generous authority of the earth. She would like to thank this collection of authentic apparitions. Thank you for coming into me, keep me here as long as you can stand my human clutter.

I was less of a person then, I know.

I’m sorry that I could not stay. Your name was too big for me,

I say to a stranger, I am harmless. But the word doesn’t seem right. I have been harmed, but I do not wish to do harm, but I could do harm.