A River in Egypt
       

Denial is not a river in Egypt
says my T-shirt, once Dad's.

But it is, with its crocodiles and palms,

and all the answers flying this way,
little vanilla egrets low over the water,

over the banked crocodiles snoozing
in the long self-sharpening shadows

which fall also on a table for one, on a balcony
overlooking a fork in my river in Egypt.

I have a perfect view of the place where one river
becomes two, as if a mirror could be divided,

or a wishbone split itself.

Denial splits the mind, making one part
invisible to the other.

The two are strangers when they
sit next to each other on the train

that makes rough music of Now or never
now or never now. Never now.

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Copyright © 2018 Chase Twichell All rights reserved
from Things as It Is
Copper Canyon Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission