• Lesley Lebkowicz

 

The falls pour a map of rivers on his back. 

            He is their creator

and destroyer shifting water courses as he turns

            this way

and that. The flow makes of his body a navigable

            terrain where once

there were only muscles, skin and the deep 

            structures of bone

ligament and sinew, an ordinary anatomy.

            Now someone could

make their way around him, know this body

            as a cartographer

knows territory and makes it accessible.

            They could explore

and conquer, plant a flag, declare a colony,

            erect locks

and canals to defeat the shifting waters.

            They could avoid

cataclysms and death by drowning.

            Or as a diviner,

they might follow the streams to

            their source

and place this man, this body, in the flood,

            a still point

in the falling, flurried world.