Both Banks

That was me last night in the faint light of the streetlamp,

me carried by the storm to the autumn slope of the mountain,

me the hidden reef washed over and over.

If you’re politics dragging darkness from the underbrush,

I’d rather be both banks of a river.

Rootless duckweed collects by the waterside,

playing out the justice of numbers,

hardly ever a question of quality.

If your chess game’s humane, something new,

then bring me the fairness of foreign lands.

I’d rather be a river, hidden in the banks of my body.