the wind is picking up

swept into a city 

on the scent of Concord grapes

we used to pick from the riverbank

to arrive here we must

follow the road that runs alongside

cross the bridge where someone

used a river for a state line 

a score as a rift 

hundreds of years of pen on paper

inscribing what must be done 

even as the realization shifts

a creek dries up while the city floods

systems made in thought and deed 

could we document them 

the way we might a family tree

that grows outward from its center 

as everything does 

roots proportionate to canopy

some memory of when 

leaves would touch

in us as another thing lost 

bonds of kinship severed 

nutrients redistributed throughout

and in the flush of all our own returned 

the knowledge we have danced the dance 

again we swore foregone 

as dinner conversation among friends 

sweet scallops raised to our mouths 

from an underwater canyon 

ninety-nine miles upstream 

that is the river 

making its way in us