The river does not mourn
the banks it has abandoned—
it is already elsewhere,
already becoming
something the sea will name.
I have stood at three deltas.
Each one taught me
the same thing
in a different mouth.
Forgetting is not failure.
It is the water finding
a lower place to go,
a softer way through.
What I have lost
is not behind me—
it is distributed,
given to the silt,
the estuarine grass,
the slow birds
who do not keep
what they find.
The delta does not ask
where it is going.
It only spreads,
and spreads,
and thins
into the open.