Not Even A Dream (&Quot;Deliverance&Quot;) Poem by John Taggart

Riverwater rushes downstream whitewater over blackrock, over
ragged rockcleft past lean-to, boulder-slabs on the riverbank—
frenzy of fast water meeting riverrock,
the force of it a cry in the heart carrying itself beyond
the echoes of other cries echoes fainter in the churning.
Part of the green, fog-shrouded, humid wilderness,
part of the night sky—a full moon cloud-ringed in darkness—
the river
wholly takes itself as itself, insensate to suffering.

Flowing past the rusted-out car-hulls sinking into river banks,
the little white clapboard church &
the grave-yard being emptied of its graves the river
is deathlessly complete
passionless in its turbulence so flat in its final afterfalls serenity
the trees half down in it