The Speaker of Rivers

Tribal Recollections 2

The speaker of rivers

sets a bowl by the wide stream.

The fish are swift, and all colours.

The large fish is followed

by all the little fish,

swimming up river

past the tribal village

between the grass and the sand.

The bowl is filled

with something shiny

but we can't see exactly what.

The speaker of rivers

is nowhere to be seen. The bowl

is resting on a little mound

of built-up earth

created by the speaker's loving hands.

But now the speaker has gone away

into nearby wilderness.

We know the speaker has gone

to wilderness and not the village

because the bowl is not

on the village side of the stream.

The stream is deep blue

like the sky in the upper distance.

The lead fish, the big fish

is banded like a rainbow,

or like a woven mat of many stripes

or a blanket, something the women

would have done, while the men

hunted the fish.

"I speak for the stream,"

the speaker says, in a voice

resounding as if disembodied

through the blue air, over the grass.

"I speak for this and all the rivers.

Leave them clean for the sweet fishes."