If Not River
       

Minnesota I’m your river. I start distant, in
quiet. I ache for scene’s completion, will
flow till I get there and will wonder what
I’ll spill, when, where, etc. Minnesota
I rise and subside depending
on season, Minnesota I too swell in spring +
deserve my own Corps to tend locks
+ help with my overflow. I like water’s all or
enough: I’m made of 61 Highways and Minnesota
have you heard how I sound
when my sky fluoresces? Sizzling in dark
and cold, that’s what, Minnesota, shivers,
a whispering from the sky like a radio station
that died at sunset yet here we are, still tuned in.
I wonder about you, Minnesota. I’ve let
your winters finger me months at a stretch,
I’ve fallen (like who hasn’t) for icy beauty, I’ve
gulped considering what lives in and/or through such chill, I’ve dived
into a lake’s hole, January, to prove something
about blood or where I belong, what I want
to know is this: Minnesota am I river
enough? What if I’m all boat?
Will you still love me Minnesota if I admit
that I, too, round up? That I don’t have
ten thousand anything but I’m happy
to claim otherwise? So much water. All that
gouging. Minnesota you wear your trampled
past well and don’t let anyone fool you: it’s not
nice, that flinty gaze you cast west to prairie, north
to another country, east to a lake bigger than sin
but Minnesota don’t pretend otherwise, it’s not
niceness either of us have been after this whole time.

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Copyright © 2012 Weston Cutter All rights reserved
from Sycamore Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission