Rio Grande

I’ve been to the border

I’m here to report back

I’ve brought you echoed calling canyon wrens,

the fragrance of wet clay and tacos cooking in a fire

across the Rio Grande by a Spanish-talking mother.

I gallop to you in a message of wild palominos

who strike a wall of spray under each hoof fall.

Make plans.

We’ll meet inside a canyon 457 meters grand,

where cactus cling and lechugilla daggers reach

their spiny hands and sneaky winds whistle songs 

through giant reeds of grass of Mexico, America.

We’ll soak in American hot spring boil.

Fleshy white of legs burns red like soil. 

When we’re done, the timer’s off,

we’ll waddle, flinching over river pebbles

into Mexico, in cooling river flow.

Occasionally, the world will visit 

in halts of English from a couple from Japan

in songs of men from Belgium

and over here a delicious bit of elder Russian.

It all comes to visit in these waters

Rest and mingle

in an endless flow of water.

Once refreshed, we all return to where we came from, 

muddied, cut and sweating.

Or maybe we cross to new beginnings.

It’s what Rio wants to show us

in a 30-foot span across a Rio Grande,

where roadrunners steal a sip of water,

where flies grow fat and drunk

on mesquite honeyed sap,

where the cruel sun warms then burns you,

where the shade and wind offers generous relief.

These are the things I had to tell you.

These are the things I had to bring you.

Before you took another breath today. 

—Emily Romano