FEW RIVERS RUN NORTH BUT MORE THAN YOU THINK

the wide and wavy Nile rushes into the Mediterranean Sea,

the Russian Ob, Lena, and Yenisev pour toward the icy north,

the Orinoco joins the Atlantic in the warm Caribbean

I remember when I watch the young men, my friends,

float nonchalantly into the abandoned market square

standing among rotting cabbage leaves and apple peels

school is good for geography, but what when the gang

hops on the band wagon and decides to do a 1968 thing?

They learn from Paris, France, the value of occupation

as revolutionary action against capitalism and brutality.

My friends wave no flags, don’t say much, smell old

in the breeze, share a match. Smoke everywhere. The sound

of sirens from the hospital. On a signal I can’t read

in the mist and falling dusk, they all begin to move 

as one without stopping, swirling water around 

lampposts and trash cans. I know where they’re

going but say nothing. Just follow with my bike

heading north to the building they’ve picked.

They ripple upstairs like a flock of geese taking off over

dark waters just as the church bells start to ring. Some

even take the elevator in their exuberance.

One flies an airplane made from yesterday’s paper, another

flicks a cigarette butt. Not all will survive. I see their feet

dangling from the roof, the bottoms of their restless feet.

PUBLISHED IN THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POETRY

JANUARY 12, 2022, VOLUME TWELVE