The river rose wildly every seventh spring

or so, and down the hatch went the town,

just a floating hat box or two, a cradle,

a cellar door like an ark to float us back

into the story of how we drown but never

for good, or long. How the ornate numbers

of the bank clock filled with flood, how

we scraped minute by minute the mud

from the hours and days until the gears

of time started to catch and count again.

Calamity is how the story goes, how

we built the books of the Bible. Not

the one for church, but the one the gods

of weather inscribed into our shoulder

blades and jawbones to grant them grit

enough to work the dumb flour of day

into bread and breath again. The world

has a habit of ending, every grandmother

and father knew well enough never to say,

so deeply was it stained into the brick

and mind. We live in the meantime

is how I remember the length of twilight

and late summer cicadas grinding the air

into what seemed like unholy racket to us,

but for them was the world's only music.