Can We Meet Again?
Will you meet me at the dam removal gathering in Yreka? It doesn’t sound romantic, but I read about it in a flier, and I thought of you. The invitation was covered in geometric symbolism, and it had a little leaping fish. It’s a salmon homecoming party hosted by Indians. There will be drums, no doubt. For every homecoming there is the thunderous percussion, lifted hands, and honor I want you to know. Indians are this way, inviting—If you could see it, you could know it, like Shelley for Mont Blanc, he wrote, “The everlasting universe of things / Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, / Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom— / Now lending splendor, where from secret springs . . .” It could be our second chance. White people made the dams—and blocked life for a hundred and six years. Now tribes are restoring the river, the salmon run will follow, and I want to celebrate something broken with you. I’d like to celebrate that broken is okay.
I want to be with you where water becomes unbound for reunion. I’d like to stand with you at some precipice. The river we could meet at came before the mountain it meanders—It’s something to leave and return to the same cascade of being. Historic channels which wave around the same rock for millions of years compel me to look back—to flood and say hello. The mountain, though, is five million years old. Imagine us like that—What time could undo. What time can make of a rock, of a people, of a fish—who won’t stop running—the fish isn’t crazy for its circling—it is waiting for the dam to break, and then it will be strong enough to withstand the current, to venture out—to know the sun off another coast where babies can take form.
The water we’ll touch will reach the ocean. I have imagined reaching down in the current with you. We’re arguably the same height. The same width, carrying similar natures. For the first time in a hundred years the river will run to estuary—for the mouth, to breach to tide and broad existence. God, that’s what I had wanted with you—for us to metaphor ourselves out of here.
Aren’t all life’s burdens shallow, and drought filled, a nothing compared to a cool goddess running. What’s life without a glimpse of the sublime in waterfall. I always want your eyes bright and healthy—on me, or, if you were sick, I have imagined your eyes closed soft, head rested on a sofa bed—what I haven’t wanted in your stillness and your solitude. Love is the kind of abstraction that never destructs. No fight could end the way my heart goes to good things alone, always, and eventually. What drink do you like when you’re sick?
I catch glimpses of what our life could have been—a two-winged life, where I turn corners and just miss you. Or you bring me a glass of wine when I write, then leave. Life can be simple, as simple as black hair, brown eyes, good skin, soft features, no shoulders or sharp edges, and just two people being kind to one another. Some don’t let me in because I’m not right for them. I’d still like one more moment. Like a walk to an old river basin—one that feels like home.
Don’t you want to be on Indian land doing something Indian with me, an Indian? Who could fault you for that want? Is that where this is going—that after years a question like what if could live better than us. I don’t think I fault you for your cowardice. What’s fault to a river but change. The plates in the earth could shift—but the water just keeps currenting wherever it must be. Life is like this for me, for you—I’ve been studying universal law, fractal life, and suffering—and stoic justice to familiarize myself with steady things.
Indians tell stories every time the earth shifts to mark the occasion—to name it like holy creation, to paint red on rock—to give life meaning. I wanted to carry a story with you. I have compartmentalized an idea that maybe someday we can meet again.
You yourself have said, “When I come for you,” as if there will be a day. What’s hope but to believe, and what’s hope but hurt until it’s actualized. This is why I said, “Come through,” and knew you couldn’t. What’s desire but desiring. It’s just an activity, that sometimes, for me, renders good work.
We need stories like we need sunbeams. We need to change our trajectories like Indians fought for the dams to be destroyed. Natural current is ancient and right here. How I’d like to visit some plume with you and watch a fire go or introduce you to who I’ve become in these last years—so much has changed. I saw a photograph of you the other day. I had to open my blocked contacts for court records (I’m dealing with a thing)—I’m sorry you’re in there, but I hate to see you. It only makes me wonder who you might be now. Your suit and tie and little hat are the colors of the villain in Paw Patrol. It’s dashing in a villainous, child way. As you were to me. Nothing major or dangerous, just unactualized, youthful calamity to my heart. You went dammed away from me and I guess I’d like a chance to look at stones with you, and smile and celebrate new life returning.
