More than whispers, less than rumors by Bob Hicok

When will water open its mouth and tell us how to be clouds

More than whispers, less than rumors

by Bob Hicok¹

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The river is high. I'd love to smoke pot 

with the river. I'd love it if rain 

sat at my table and told me what it's like 

to lick Edith Piaf's grave. I go along thinking 

I'm separate from trash day 

and the weird hairdo my cat wakes up with 

but I am of the avalanche 

as much as I am its tambourine. 

The river is crashing against my sleep 

like it took applause apart and put it back together 

as a riot of wet mouths 

adoring my ears, is over my head

when it explains string theory 

and affection to me, 

when it tells me to be the code breaker, 

not the code. What does that mean? 

Why does lyric poetry exist?

When will water open its mouth 

and tell us how to be clouds, how to rise

and morph and die and flourish and be reborn

all at the same time, all without caring

if we have food in our teeth or teeth in our eyes

or hair in our soup or a piano in our pockets,

just play the damned tune. The river is bipolar 

but has flushed its meds, I'm dead 

but someone has to finish all the cheese 

in the fridge, we're a failed species

if suction cups are important, if intelligence

isn't graded on a curve, 

but if desperation counts, if thunderstorms 

are the noise in our heads given a hall pass 

and rivers swell because orchestras 

aren't always there when we need them, well then, 

I still don't know a thing.

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1. Copyright © 2019 by Bob Hicok. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 11, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets