cairo confluence

(June 2022. Hitchhiking cross country.)

cairo confluence

last night i was saved by a kentucky angel
who drove three hours out of her way
to get me to cairo where i dreamed of sleep

the mere temptation of a map led me here,
to the tip of the tip of the tip
where the great westward river of the green east meets the mississippi.
indeed at this point the ohio is thicker than the mother river,
and are names not a measure of
verbing thickness?

i walked down and touched the water at the tip of the nameless central river,
and the warmth of the day’s held heat was gifted to me.

my angel and i sat up in the dark talking with the stars.
i would have kissed her if she had asked me to.
she drove home after midnight,
and i laid my sleeping bag as close to the tip as i could
on soft ground before the rocks,
without setting up my tent, with the wide water
opening 300 degrees around me, flowing southward.
i slept sunburned and happy, with my puppy curled against me,
not minding the mosquitoes, not minding barges’ sweeping spotlights,
for the stars are guardian angels for those who open themselves to them.

the next morning i received a gift of a yellow umbrella,
and hitched across the mississippi in the back of a pickup,
ready once again to cross the american west—
not as a conqueror, but as an explorer.