EQUATING

Brown man stands before a river. If brown man stays
on the bank, his body would stretch 1,885 miles from
where his shadow starts. These dimensions make it so
he wants to put his skin in touch with the current.
Two distinct worlds become possible inside him: 1)
brown man either drowns, flailing and gulping down
water or struggles against the riptide until he swims.
In either world, the river’s heartbeat, a race between
light and water, whorls through his ears. In the river,
his body might speak. Might say struggle. Might say
move through the unsayable chill. In his mind, he
wants to jump. In his heart, a faith diminished. It is a
stone-like plummet before rising. Let’s say he doesn’t
make it. In the river bed, asleep, the sediment eroded
upstream is a soft grave. The body, curled. The body,
graced. In this mouth, he is not devoured. Alone
again, not just his body, but his name. There is no one
to mourn him, but plenty of water. Let’s say he
survives, finding a strong stroke. How long would it
take for the current to carry his darkness to new soil?
His darkness, the sum of the sun touching him all day.
Warmth and light. His skin, divided by these two, is a
gliding shadow under the skin of the water. This
calculation consumes. And the roar of the river is
there, too. One hundred or more decibels as close as
he is. Twenty five birds perched in an elm want to
doze in the afternoon. But they scatter. Brown man,
who is still on the bank, multiplies this twenty five by
two, a body and a shadow, and 50 seen things move
where the horizon thins. He takes that number and
extrapolates those lives now touched by their beauty:
infinite. He cannot think in these terms. His feet and
shadow equal dust. 

Eric Cruz is poet and teacher residing in San Antonio, Texas. He is the winner of the Pecan Grove Press Chapbook Contest for Through The Window (Pecan Grove Press 2002), selected by Palmer Hall. His poems have recently appeared in Carve, Gulf Coast, Leon Literary Review, and Zocalo. Cruz received his MFA from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson.