On Reading a Poem Called Giant Springs in a Montana Literary Journal from the 1980s

Giant Springs squandered

and shallow Summers spent

great Falls calling up

the tenuous Winters,

the cold that comes on.

Deep in the throat,

your voice is on ice

til the thaw sets in.

But

there are dark chambers

beneath the heaving

chest; the continents,

rotten with the worm-

eaten tunnels, contain

whispering blue caverns

that disguise the boiling

furnace at the core.

Underground,
rivers shiver
when they emerge.
Urgent and apoplectic,
the water shakes
and wordless
waits for the trembling
voice you were given.

Write away! Poet
ess, with pursed lips
and self-satisfied sphincter,

Stoke the bones

before you

incinerate origins,

and forget the names
(of your patron)
(or your mom).

The idea of you,

born in public passages--
laughed at, teased--

comes into the world

without that saving grace
of sovereign honesty.
You are not
a river.

 Two perplexing dilemmas--

death and birth--

must happen

before you swim

out again, into the purity

that dances in green

shadows made

of water and of light.