Guide

He said few words,
our Ojibwa guide
near the head-waters
wilderness, muskie,
pike, and pickerel fishing
on college semester break.

He warned the Ojibwa knew
the waters as trained observers,
not through spirit connections,
that he lived with rivers,
with artesian springs that made
the first rivulets that led to creeks,
had discovered through bubbles
where other springs underwater
forced the spread into shallow lakes,
a geologist, he said, in a way,
hydrologist in another.

How we come to know
becomes part of our eyes,
then part of our spirit.
It’s takes years to get over
bunk and belief and rely
on what waters do before you.

I can’t read a new river
or lake by feel any more
than a naïve college hick
out in the larch and swamp
who imagines an Ojibwa
has some deep correspondence
with the land, the water.
Like you, after I graduated
from college, I drowned.