Here the water is silt brown,
                stretches mile-wide,
                                flat as a washed-out conveyor belt,
               an unhemmed rumble strip.
I can't read the River, can't see my hand
when it plunges elbow-deep
               to feel the cool against
                            the Mississippi heat—
            hot as a dog's mouth.
Here we canoe for hours
through swirling eddies,
                watch the trash barges
                                 and tugboats travel downstream.
                The River glistens hard as broken glass.
Here, everything is fluid.
In lower Mississippi, the South's south,
                where the two-lane blacktop cuts through
                                an infinity of flat: cotton, soybean, corn.
                Farm, farm, tumbledown shack.
Creeks and rivers bifurcate the land like blood veins.
Here, the GPS gives up.
               New islands form at the current's whim
                              and what is untouched grows lush and verdant.
               Willow and privet border the collapsing coastline.
A carp leaps into the boat when it hears us coming.
We stop here in an oxbow, gumbo mud sticks to our feet.
               River rock. Plastic. Fossils. Gar.
                               Racoon and coyote leave tracks in the rust-colored sand.
               The slaves—sold down the river—hid here,
waited for their chance to escape up north,
hid in caves, fled to the Twin Cities and Canada,
                their fate at the mercy of the river's next rise.
                              Here's the nadir of our suffering,
               which started in one place to end in another.
Here's where flow and marvel and history converge.
This harmjoy. This beautiful sadness.