Sharks in the Rivers

Ada Limón

• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781571318183
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Poesia

"A wonderful book" from the National Book Award for Poetry finalist that explores themes of dislocation and danger (Bob Hicok, author of Red Rover, Red Rover ). The speaker in this extraordinary collection finds herself dislocated: from her childhood in California, from her family's roots in Mexico, from a dying parent, from her prior self. The world is always in motion—both toward and away from us—and it is also full of risk: from sharks unexpectedly lurking beneath estuarial rivers to the dangers of New York City, where, as Ada Limón reminds us, even rats find themselves trapped by the garbage cans they've crawled into. In such a world, how should one proceed? Throughout Sharks in the Rivers, Limón suggests that we must cleave to the world as it "keep[s] opening before us, " for, if we pay attention, we can be one with its complex, ephemeral, and beautiful strangeness. Loss is perpetual, and each person's mouth "is the same / mouth as everyone's, all trying to say the same thing." For Limón, it's the saying—individual and collective—that transforms each of us into "a wound overcome by wonder, " that allows "the wind itself" to be our "own wild whisper." "Through the steamy, thorny undergrowth, up through the cold concrete, under the swift river, Limon soars and twirls like a bird, high on heart." —Jennifer L.Knox, author of Crushing It

1.

Oh, I used to dream of oceans and streams,
flowing and growing strong.
Where have all those days gone?

—The Black Keys

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Sharks in the Rivers

We’ll say unbelievable things
to each other in the early morning—

our blue coming up from our roots,
our water rising in our extraordinary limbs.

All night I dreamt of bonfires and burn piles
and ghosts of men, and spirits
behind those birds of flame.

I cannot tell anymore when a door opens or closes,
I can only hear the frame saying, Walk through.

It is a short walkway—
into another bedroom.

Consider the handle. Consider the key.

I say to a friend, how scared I am of sharks.

How I thought I saw them in the creek
across from my street.

I once watched for them, holding a bundle
of rattlesnake grass in my hand,
shaking like a weak-leaf girl.

She sends me an article from a recent National Geographic that says,

Sharks bite fewer people each year than
New Yorkers do, according to Health Department records.

Then she sends me on my way. Into the City of Sharks.
Through another doorway, I walk to the East River saying,

Sharks are people too.
Sharks are people too.
Sharks are people too.

I write all the things I need on the bottom
of my tennis shoes. I say, Let’s walk together.

The sun behind me is like a fire.
Tiny flames in the river’s ripples.

I say something to God, but he’s not a living thing,
so I say it to the river, I say,

I want to walk through this doorway
but without all those ghosts on the edge,
I want them to stay here.
I want them to go on without me.

I want them to burn in the water.

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Flood Coming

The pulled-apart world scatters
its bad news like a brush fire,
the ink bleeds out the day’s undoing
and here we are again: alive.

The tributary of this riverine dark
widens into the mind’s brief break.
Let the flood come, the rowdy water
beasts are knocking now and now.

What’s left of the woods is closing in.
Don’t run. Open your mouth big
to the rising and hope to your god
your good heart knows how to swim.

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The Widening Road

All winter the road has been paved in rain,
holding its form as if made of its own direction.

We have a lot of these days. Or not.

A woman in a car staring out, her hands going numb.
When did the world begin to push us so quickly?

A blue jay flies low over her into the madrones.
She can still see it—its bright movements rocking a branch—
surely delighted that it matches the sky.

The honest clouds.

A tenderness grows like a fluttering in her hand.

She wants to hold it in her arms but not pin it down,
the way the tree holds the jay generously
in its willful branches. The spring is blowing
through her, pulling the dead debris free from her limbs.

She cannot decide what she desires, but today it is enough

that she desires and desires. That she is a body

in the world, wanting, the wind itself becoming

her own wild whisper.

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Good Enough

To be utterly lost is a fine story
(good enough), especially in some small creeks
in the gold madrone world I came into.
To hide underneath Highway 12,
and listen to the automobiles go by while I,
another creek-thing (good enough), go marching
in the morning current, older than I remember
(good enough), a little better for wear (good enough),
a little less shiny and new (good enough),
a river rock with ten thousand waves upon it,
ten thousand perfect (good enough) bruises.

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High Water

We become our own land sometimes,
no important nation, the hand on our door, the ship mast come
up over the flat ocean of dishwater.

Say there is nothing to it; my rock is your rock, my empty name
is your empty name, but mine reminds me more of me.

If we begin to count our blessings we could cull up the very stones
and bones in the pavement, but we’d never count the dust.
We distrust what we become.

One woman stands in the middle of the street and looks both ways
for a long time, until she continues to walk that yellow line straight
into the river.

Bless our own kingdoms, our thrones of maps and mirrors.

Perhaps the woman believes she can walk on water,
or that the road is just the river deadened by factories and footprints.

In 1890 her grandmother lived at the very edge of town, and all
around her the marsh hawks sat low in the reeds.

She sang, Loo-rye, loo-rye, loo-rye, loo,
because she thought it was the sound the river made.

And no life is as long as a river.

At dinner we have a discussion about acceptable behavior—
how nothing feels quite right this winter.

She walked straight into the river! Must have thought she was Moses!

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And on the ride home I grab your hand on the stick shift
and want to s...