Tributary

            For Elizabeth Bishop

All rivers run
away from the heart,
carrying our richest,
blackest granules
to the Gulf
or another sea,
falling away on either
side of us as if we
are the elevation
that divides love
from love,
lapping banks and sandbars
along each course,
wearing turbulent memories
down to pebbles
which become
ever more solid,
even as they shrink.

Morgan Grayce Willow, award-winning poet and essayist, is the author of several collections and chapbooks, including Dodge & Scramble, Between, Silk, The Maps are Words, and Arpeggio of Appetite. Her interest in the art of the book led her to Minnesota Center for Book Arts where she exhibited her artist’s book Collage for Mina Loy in 2016. She teaches at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, MN.