Sharks in the Rivers

by Ada Limon

She cannot decide what she desires, but today it is enough that she desires and desires. That she is a body

This life is hard. And let me be the first to admit, when I come across some jewel of pleasure, I too want to squeeze that thing until even its seedy heart evaporates like ethanol, want to throw my bird-bones into the brush-fire until, half-blind, all I can hear is the sound of wings in the relentlessly delighted air.

Stuck in the answer of day, all we’ve got are these people to rely on— and trees, and the grasp of a river in the mind.

A friend says the best way to love the world is to think of leaving.

Maybe there is a way— like fish in the cold fall storms, maybe we do, our bodies unskinned and unadorned, making our way to the place our beating belongs, our pulsing light flashing up a river.