Ash from two cigarettes on the stone pylon beneath my feet,
I **** yellowbrown into the Hocking.
My stream meets the river on a riptide,
Carefully crafted from the funneled remnants
Of melted snow and torrential rain
Just to give off the illusion of chaos.
Forms of spectacular watermotion grace the noonday clouds,
And despite their haste, too high on molly,
There’s something hanging in the stillness beneath the mudbrown surface—
Some epiphanic moment that rapidity and angerwaves
Refuse to force out of sight; some
Strand of smoke, still floating upwards from the dampened cigarette ash
Abandoned twelve hours prior; some
Slurred-drunken word, tinged anyways with meaning.

The lips I kissed after climbing back onto the bridge the night before
Proved to be less than irrelevant (screaming later, as they did, someone else’s name
While I lay listening, still half thinking that
Maybe she’d just gone upstairs for some floss). But
The fact that there were lips there at all,
In the rain
Under the stars
Over the Hocking
Issuing with reverence the words “magical” and “perfect”
Through the darkness of the night and the echoes of Joni Mitchell’s voice…
It’s something worth noting, despite the angerwaves;
Something worth feeling
Despite the noonday clouds and dampened ash.

Now that I’ve screamed at the river and ****** on it with a harshlaugh,
I think I can also
Find a moment to give it thanks.
Because I’m off the pylon now.
I’m back on the bridge. And I’m walking South
With the flow of the Hocking, back into Athens.
And I am finally
(The rain beating against my face, my clothes, my mind)
So very here.