I watched as my mother and father were seduced by a river
“she is the loveliest,” They swooned, “no others can compare.”
How petty, to think only one river can house the seed of beauty,
when its flower has more than enough
to spread along Appalachia’s curves
But then I came across her banks,
nestled between mountains whose peaks
echoed of topographical Artemis of Ephesus,
breasts of plenty out of which the green forest
by the glittering water spilled across rock and
cliff
And there the river starlet was,
a sinuous nymph whose body
seems to run an endless course
each cresting wave over a jutting rock a finger
motioning, “Come into me and let my water
carry away your tears in the flood”
She becomes the mouth of the Tennessee
when their waters meet,
his hands, his writhing and wild heart,
but here, she is unadulterated by Mississippi’s tryst with the King,
here she is gathering an army of fishermen and hikers as lovers,
so that no king, when they finally reconvene their seelie court
beneath the translucent aqua,
can tarnish her beauty
by doting on another
She clashes with mountains as banks,
she holds parties with pines whose stillness
does not equate with dullard here,
she lures a boatman into her embrace
by tempting him with her scales,
knowing that eventually one will be foolish enough
to ride into her rapid hips where she will keep him forever
For us love is patient and kind,
to her love is serfdom
and everyone who sees her winding down by the foot trail,
her voice, a rushing laughter in the sun echoing down the foot trails,
to everyone who feels her mountain chill,
she is a queen we all wind up promising fealty to
by the repetition of our dance along rock and root mazed shore
