Poem drafts: Immerse
This poem came from a line from my UWB thesis, I think, or maybe just an idea or feeling that I had been trying to work out. It may have been inspired by UWB faculty getting me to think about what it meant to write river poems. The first draft I have dated is from june 9th 2021 I think the final came about a year ago. Looking at it now, I think I had collected a lot of lines i liked from other fragements and tried to shove them together. I ended up spreading things out again in the process. Or maybe I just wrote this all at once. There is really only so much I can remember about the beginnings of each specific poem.
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Immerse.
I scurry across wet rock, stepping over black sand.
Water pooled waiting for the bay’s pull. Before the fence closes in
the scrap yard at the end of the train tracks from Nucor.
The back of the factory has no windows. Water is easier to pollute when it's not there. Bricks on the beach, all breaking down. Gulls, crying out like creaking hinges.
A fisherman, pulling in his net, looks away when I wave.
Duwamish means, “People of the inside.” Or, the people who signed the Point Elliott Treaty first were never given their land.
River is not allowed to flood. Tidal flat and tributary turned to street and building.
On the map, river is a line. In the mouth it is musky salt wind and tide.
Boundaries limit. The edges grow over with blackberry thorn.
But, river is an action that never stops and I am lost
between the name and what is front of me.
My feet sink below the water. I am afraid of what I may step on.
I must leave behind the logic of roads that shout semi and siren.
I walk waist deep. I lean back to float.
The current does not care what my name is.
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Many of these lines worked their way into other poems that ended up into other poems. There was almost too much here. And then after a while the final draft became.
Immerse.
Scurry cross wet rock over
black sand grit,
water pools waiting for bay’s pull
before fence closes in junk train at one end
of the tracks from Nucor.
Feet sink deep below water
I am afraid what I may dislodge. Walk
waist lower, lean back to float
the current doesn’t need my name
to take me.
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I stripped a lot away because I think I realized that I wanted this poem to be the one that I entered the water, that I thought about what it meant to get into and move with the current.
This ended up getting published in Clamor Journal’s online 2022 collection with seven other poems that ended up using a bunch of the lines/ideas that I stripped from this one.
I spend a lot of time editing and rearranging things and wondering what would be better but at the end of the day who is to say the first thing that comes out isn’t the best. All personal preference? All a process for sure.
