The River

“I am frightened by the sorrow…”
from “In Face of Hatred” by James Wright

I am frightened by the sorrow
no one can name. It is
a secret river heard when
summer’s laughter dies

and when the wind strips
garish faces from the trees, the
river moans. It runs through
everyone—the child still listeningwhen other children run
away, the old man shaking his reluctant cane, the mother
kissing every toe before it grows

too big. Great rocks know the river
and are still, and redwood trees,
a thousand years of waiting, and even
mountains newly built of concrete,

steel and glass fall to earth
to hear the river thrumming day and night.
Women in dark veils and folded bruises put their ears

against the ground and hum
and children lying under sheets
of flies are lulled to sleep. I watch
the bursting bombs and hear the

drone of airplanes in the drone of bees
and wonder that the river keeps to its bed.
Why is there not more drowning,
why do I not drown. The river is a secret

river, underground and swelling. Fed by
tears unshed and words unsaid
and love not lived. And arrogance.
And everybody hears its voice and some
don’t turn aside to greater noise
but learn to build an ark.

Patricia Lee Lewis

Biography

Patricia Lee Lewis leads writing retreats at Patchwork Farm in western Massachusetts and internationally. She celebrates our relationship to the earth as sacred, to writing as a way of finding what is deepest within us, and to teaching writing as a participatory, supportive endeavor. She holds an MFA degree in Creative Writing from Vermont College, and a BA from Smith College, Phi Beta Kappa. An Affiliate of Amherst Writers & Artists and national trainer of workshop leaders, her chapbook of poems, A Kind of Yellow, won first prize for poetry in Writer's Digest's International Competition of self-published books, 2005. It is available at www.writingretreats.org.