Riversong
Nathan Manley
With the anticipation of tuned strings
faltering to a throb as one rises
and dies into the other’s surer pitch,
the idea of God, cricket-hidden,
is trilling out among the reeds, sounding
the bottomland, silvering scintillant
as an arc weld, so alive that you might,
by sheer force of concentration, cup it
to your ear and bend it like a circuit,
humming, into the electric rivers
of your body, synapse to sinew, through
to some all-eluding revelation.
The fat, vivacious bees blunder, meanwhile,
cloudlike in their browse about the heather,
and seem to know great, ineffable things
by the ornaments of air each rides, tossed
from ghost to ghost on the bloom of his wings.
And daylight hollows the corpse of the morning,
knowing nothing, and hides for other hours
the shrill, punctilious wisdom of stars.
Startled bullfrogs make ripples of their eyes.
And yet, a cold to quiet the insects
even now is combing down the tree-knit shades,
a cold you’ll acquiesce to, someday, and
pass under, through to anything at all,
you pray, but soundlessness:
no cricket
whittling August to his God-song, light-fine
and joyous, moon spilt up the glade—no moon,
even, to be hooked with a careful phrase
and hauled from the sky.
Let there be water
where we’re going.
Lord, let there be water.
Nathan Manley is a writer and erstwhile English teacher from Loveland, Colorado. He is the author of two chapbooks, *Numina Loci* (Mighty Rogue Press, 2018) and *Ecology of the Afterlife *(Split Rock Press, 2021). Recent poems and Latin translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Portland Review, Natural Bridge, The Classical Outlook and others. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. You can find his writing and instrumental music at nathanmmanley.com