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Dickens’s “enormous ditch”

Twain’s “big still river”

Langston Hughes’ “blues river”

Faulkner’s “luminous” Yoknapatawpha river.

Like spring water rises

each foreign atlas naming

through a ten-some of all-America states.

Minnesota Hastings

Wisconsin Genoa

Iowa Guttenberg

Illinois Cairo

Missouri New Madrid

Kentucky Columbus

Tennessee Memphis

Louisiana Venice and New Orleans

its clearwater to saltwater swell

into the Gulf of Mexico

as the city sings

Sachmo’s “Boy From New Orleans”

Fats Waller’s “Walking to New Orleans”

Johnny Cash’s “Big River”

Dr. John’s “Sweet Home New Orleans”

John Lee Hooker’s “Going to Louisiana.”

Like spring water rises

all from drips

amid grass drops

amid leaf leaks.

Like spring water

rises the

amniotic

birth

fluids

of

America’s

great

necessary

tree

and

sky

trade

and

slave

word

and

song

artery

river-run.

Rocky Flatirons

Five Colorado slabs

Five Nature fingers

(next to the Devil’s Thumb)

Five Green Mountain rock faces

Five signatures of the Eastern Slope

Five NCAR climate dials