Psalm 1
The mouth of the Amazon river swallowed
A whole island and never spit it out.
There is a strange man like a tree in the shallows
Who tells stories to a breakout
Pod of pink river dolphins, and they listen.
He says cradle the sun, spread its jam
On your beaks of praise, and he means sin
Is only for the dying and for the men
Who scatter the air like flies. They are breeze
He says, rooting into the rich Terra Preta
And hanging green cashews, pregnant with ease
From the wingspan of his canopy of leaves.
He is always at that great gate of water
Birthing the old tales like an otter’s hungry mother.
David Pitcher is a poet and shelter worker living and writing in the United States. He has been featured on NPR’s The Poets Weave and has poetry forthcoming in The Wheel and Anti-Heroin Chic. His writing has been published in LETTERS, The Pedestal Magazine, Confluence and elsewhere.
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