The Soul is a River, The River Has a Soul
As a child, I was taken to Hoover dam,
one of the wonders of the world, they said,
and in a way it was, a testament to the workers
who risked their lives to build a concrete moat
complete with castlettes
to hold the Mother water back,
and all the life she once nourished,
and all that once laid increase into her womb.I stood on the hydroelectric dam,
atop the concrete spillway.
I felt the machine-drone
of the deep turbines underneath
trying to say something to my foot bones
through my shoes,
something like, ‘I am mighty,
look to me. ‘But I had already been naked in rivers
and crossed land over ice lakes in winter,
and been baptized in creeks,
and the dam could not say enough
to convince me,
for I knew the mightiness
belonged to open water…
__________
CODA
The painting, a watercolor by Buffalo Kaplinski, b. 1943, “Frisco, Colorado, Aspen Fall Patterns.” ©1995, 2008 All Rights Reserved
The poem excerpt “The Soul is a River, The River Has a Soul,” ©1970, 2008, C.P. Estés, All Rights Reserved. From the book Pulse of the River, Colorado Writers Speak for the Endangered Cache La Poudre, editors: Wockner, Bass, Pritchett