Caroline Crumpacker


Viewer Discretion and Young Child

Darling this story begins al segno
             following the river
             to middle expressionism         and then to the moral order
             of families       as the dissolving centerpiece of a predisposition
                                                 for nostalgia.

Ach Du Lieber...

This to say she                           understands water individually
             not                                collectively.
Physicality                                  is easier           than abstraction
             even at                          her       age.

The river         contradicts the bath.
The little inflatable pool              a desolate thing.

She says                                    warrr...
We say Yes yes                          water.

Everyone here                            owes a debt to the River.
Without                                      knowing why.

We would pave it over if we could.

The hose unleashes                     a torrent.
She says Stop warr.                   I say the evening peeling a bit at the corners
like the old landscape                 drama it is. I had cachet once in choices.
And a butterfly enters                 the conversation as the lost soul
of romantic painting.

Before the bridges                      imagine its necessity.
Function is                                 the rending.

Now a thriving business             in dislocation.
Small servings of beauty            sold in the name of geographic privilege.
Sweet-smelling summer             funk.
The railroad straddles the river               and takes us
             as the song says                        up up up.
Up-river the family                                 thrives like the green reeds
of a New Orleans Gothic.

Families are form                       not function.

Where the corn                         and lilies manipulate.
Where the bookstore                 has a section called “River”.
Where the words                      are,
             a new place                             is created.

The water is sugar tea in August.
I lie sweating in bed                  at mid-day thinking this is my life.
And outside a drumbreat          of ruination
             and celebration..

We go walking and she says     beach
No no, — quay
.

The remaining imperative,         love.

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