You asked me about God
in the time of harvest. You 
asked me if God were a

construct to prove in relief.
This is the delta; this is the stony
back of Him. This is what we were

never given. These fields, the white
of them. We gasped for air in the
landscape. What could you know

of cotton? What could you know
of the blood? I love you. I need you 
to know the blood-soaked earth 

of which I am made. How it feels
to fear the earth itself, for the earth
to be a god itself, and the river

that can give or take it all back again 
for any reason she decides. I told you 
about the flood. I told you how we 

gathered all we had on our backs and 
carried ourselves to the levee, how the 
boats came for us and turned their backs too 

and left us to rot for 78 days, which 
(coincidentally) is the same number
of days I am told I lived and died 

and lived and died and remained here 
on earth by will alone. Will and love. 
Once, I said, I was whole and free 
of grief. You took my hand. You asked

how one can survive this, and I said:
what do I know of survival as I blew
apart into mist and the river rose up

for you: a blessing, a drowning, a baptism.