Up the Niger

By John Grey

For the dirt poor, the river is riches.
Anchored in mud, a man can
still skim the brown water for fish,
a woman scrub her naked baby.
Horse-drawn carts trudge back and forth
to its rotting jetty.
The one cafe in town overlooks its hypnotic swirl.
A baguette with butter and a view
of splashing children, goats drinking...
what more could a man ask for.
I drop coins in the blind beggar’s cup,
listen for a time to the tuneless singer.
That current, the color of monkey crap,
probably poison for all I know...
and yet, without it, this morning doesn’t exist.
I’m not unfolding the week old newspaper.
The Frenchman with the snowy beard
is not trying to cajole me into card games.
The boy doesn’t laugh, the girl lift her dress
up to her knees and wade out to a floating ball.
I’d be home maybe, thinking to myself,
now where can I go where there’s a river.
This place would never come to mind.
Without its flow, nothing would.


John Grey has been published recently in the Echolocation, Santa Fe Poetry Review and Caveat Lector with work upcoming in Clark Street Review, Poem and the Evansville Review.