Brisbane River Rowing

A canoe wades through river reflections of an upside-down Brisbane
from the pier to the Story Bridge where water has already forgotten the vessel

as shoals. This is how my past faded like morning mist
that disappears the creek. At the banks, paperbarks are ghosts

haunting a capsized boat. Someone is practicing piano
from a riverside house—The Swan by Camille Saint-Saens

floats through an open window. Listen closely, the riverbed cries
with the drowned, cities crumble from tides, and mangroves

are all a babble of shadows. Each stroke of the oar shatters
into themselves. Over and over, the Vietnamese word for ‘river’

is the same as ‘life’—sông. I search the waterfront view
whenever I long to be reborn, a sliver of amniotic fluid.

7am, and God is resurrecting genesis on the sepia tide. Light coins
on the wattles banking gold. That vast assembly of leaves

is a verbiage flashing from another realm. A rich man can enter heaven
as a drop of light might enter the eye of a caterpillar, chewing a needle hole

on a leaf, threading sky. The canoe passes Kangaroo Point,
whose locals insist Jesus’ bearded face manifests on the cliffs

daily at 8am. Fallen rocks hieroglyph their ancient messages
of erosion. Morning light can spot a chrysalis, the warm glow

on a thousand apartment windows, an old windmill spinning shadows
of convicts that have dissolved, fishbone ferns polished like jade

pendants worn in autumn, and boats all dipped in a sparkle
of free will. The river has been lying here for thirty million years,

slumbering forever lucid. Its currents will go on, as always,
and I will be nothing to the waters. Not even a bone-

white shore that waits for the tides in pieces, in constant search
of itself to be made whole. The sun blooms between cassias.

Two branches reach toward each other. Golden whistlers sing
as if it were the first day of creation. Day lifts to mist,

and oars dip into their shadow selves downriver,
until the vessel ripples into the water’s amnesia.

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