Poetry
MARRIAGE AS HOOVER DAM
You were built up slow,
block on blunt block,
shoulders set so wide
and high, you could last
forever. You are concrete
and you are skin.
You are the rim
of the reservoir, pressure
dissipator.
Your rounded back, holding.
Holding back
the furious surge
seeping soft and wet
on your downstream face.
Fish fail and birds
depart the parapet's
curve, calculated
to embrace
your other side, starved
of what it needs
to be a river.
And if you fail,
would the shuddering rush
shatter everything in its sway?
Pray for the breach,
anyway.