Great River – a poem by Seth Jani

Great River

It’s okay to love this perishing dream-body.
You don’t have to reject the world.
Eternity courts the ten-thousand things
on their way to nowhere, sliding out of darkness
like fallen stars. So, let the emerald wind
rush across your skin until your tender as field grass.
Let the moon ignite on your shoulders. It’s so much lighter
than the earth, than the troubled engine of thoughts.
It’s all shadows now, and distant longings,
silver poems shot up like flares.
When gravity finally reigns us back in
it will find us slick as salmon
wriggling our way up the great river,
disappearing into the mouths of caves.
The continents are burning, but there is another forest
in the heart. The roots tie us together
in a nexus of bright connection. I don’t care
that you don’t believe in ghosts or meanings,
in big-time flowery love. The language doesn’t matter.
We burn for one another out of a secret knowledge
in our blood and bones.
This really is the middle point between horizons.
We are here to build the ladder.

Seth Jani lives in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com). Their work has appeared in Chiron Review, The Comstock Review, Psaltery & Lyre and Pretty Owl Poetry, among others. Their full-length collection, Night Fable, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2018.  More about them and their work can be found at www.sethjani.com.