PROSE POETRY

MARY JO ROBINSON-JAMISON

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WE HAVE MOVED SO FAR FROM THE RIVERS

We have moved so far from the rivers. We have divided the earth into quadrants and set up servers. We have built ourselves banks of bytes. Divided the world into this or that and made a binary din. And when we’ve come to the last number will it look any different than this? We have moved so far from the rivers. What will we drink? Even now, lonely faucets creak. We have moved so far from the rivers. Who will throw rocks in the water for pleasure? If we throw stones now, they will land on our houses. Who will remember when we used to bend and search for a skipping stone? Who will remember how they left our hands and arced the way a dog dreams. How they flew. How they moved suspended in bridges. Who will remember how the stone skipped the same way the tracks of birds disappear on a shore.  We have moved so far from the rivers. 

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Mary Jo Robinson-Jamison lives in St. Paul with her husband Kent with whom she raised two children. She grew up working in her dad’s Red Owl grocery. For forty years she worked with the severely multiply handicapped as a music therapist. Her work has appeared in Talking Writing, Driftwood Press, Green Mountains Review, and a Cracked Walnut anthology.