The River Woman Sequence

Sabine Pelzmann

I am the river, and the river is me
A Maori proverb
 

the River Woman

Dry is the mountain range
dried up the valley
men’s smiles are frozen
the soil in the fields is dried up
dry cracks rip the land asunder
the land can no longer hold
the roots of its trees

It is time for the river woman
the drums call her
she can hear the longing in the sounds

The river woman creeps
out of her cave

On the land’s highest mountain she lies down
spreads her arms and legs
and begins to sing

As she sings, her arms and legs
and her head turn into water
her arms and legs become longer and longer
they flood the dry valleys

When the land’s soil
Is wet through
the river woman retires back to her cave
she won’t be seen again
for years

my groundwater      

I hear the water
flow slowly
deep beneath the earth
it pounds on flat stone
a deep gurgling

what splashes in me
I cannot fathom
so simply
and yet there is a river in me
that claims space
I feel it now
I’ll hear it soon

the smile of the earth
flows in me

the river within me

it is
as though the world in me
had become a river
I flow into the land

with no thought of the river mouth
and without feeling the delta

sometime the sea will receive me

I flow the memory of my river bank’s countries
and the current within me
forces me to continue

perhaps
into a newly found safe port