At High Falls

We married by the falls, fell asleep,
and the child was born. Joy, Exhaustion.

We taught her names for the river:
endless, merciless, oxbow,
alluvial, thwarted by cobalt,
covered with a fine dust of bees
moving as if by command south.
She made those sounds her way,
all verbs and vowels. We coaxed her to
to walk along the banks, and pointed out pointed out (nice line break)
rills, riprap, a net of ripples
from a snagged pine, splash of a bass
against the current, the current itself
like a sheen or the white of the eye.
She dawdled, repeating those words
-Anduren, Itaglio- in a language
she invented, with our accent,
but without the intimate failure.

Each of us would see the world only once
in a finite sequence, each of us in a sequence, int.
knew a few stars -Aldebaran, Arcturus,
and assumed there were names
for the others, and no names
for the reflections that glittered
brighter each summer,
so we held hands bitterly,
certain that time was against us,
and the mind, and the veering wind.

...

back cover: Praise for 'Burnt Island' - Paul Oppenheimer: A solid, brilliant reminder that the anguish of finding apt names for our experience remains among the chief, if precarious, sources of redemption.." rather appropr for this poem At High Falls that I opened to.

p39 The Border Kingdom, Poems, D. Nurske. 2008.

attractive black cover, grey white inset square photo ~dunescape land & sky darker & lighter grey.
opened to this page, loved those first lines:

We married by the falls, fell asleep,
and the child was born. Joy, Exhaustion.

___________________________________________________________________