2 November 1581.1611

2 November 1581.1611
John Colman Swims the Great River

When I was a child I saw murder.
There was blood on the stones
that leaked through the streets
into a great flood. I felt waves
and I wanted to die and fail.

I could not let my life fall
down and become one
of those awkward strangers
hanging about the shore
and muddy streets
for an axe to strike off
the head of my mother
as she watched the waters
of the great river quit.

It was a fever. Mother had
died five years past in Delft.
The savages covered me.
I saw the face of murder.

I remember how he was struck
down by a rock. He would die
laughing and I would live.

I did not drown.
Stuck to the slime
caught in the muddy noose,
I was buried in the earth
when I was shaken by furious storm.


Day Two

The tempest struck rocksand they moved.

They shifted as I shifted
and I wished for a brief second
that rocks of littoral of this flooded river
drove out all the sea demons
and bring us back home safe.
I know when I drink
how anyone is safe if they
do wish their own end
before they are struck
with shot, or the axmen
or the executioner shows
fate to the end may you wish
other oaths to keep you safe
at least until your teeth are gone.
If I had died, how would
I have watched Ska Nee
give birth? She had entered
before my enlistments,
Great River had swallowed up,
and I would never join the circle
where wise men talked with their
hands and hearts more than words.

I understood it all every flood
drowns the man who swims
the passage from the isle
across to the tall red stones
shimmer as antimony. My leg healed.

My arms stretched from the sails
behind to the ones in front.
I get stronger. She who heals stirs
at my back and loins with her fat
rubbed hands and catches my shiver.

She works my legs. She makes me move
as she leads me out of death. When my
flesh blackened and I had fever and shrieked
to other savage gods my denial. Curses shifted
underneath the river of hands. The rain pounded
my head slowed my stroke. Caught by the cold water,
I made me tight and then when the mist rose
from the fire. Fish will be boiled but I entered
the brook and soon it was hot and the heat slowed breath.

The woman moved her breasts
to my mouth slowly, and holding
my jaw she feeds me that white blue
broth. I am eager. She knows that I
cannot exist with civil people.


I get stronger every day. Red rolling
fire branded clouds before sunrise drifted
against the back of my hands
take them into my lives but I didn’t.
I made it to the broken rocks and lifted
my sore shoulders up to drape my body
on the red moss. One small beetle wore
his half shell turned over and drifted I
realized and found the flat rocks rose
above the stumps of a forest of drowned trees.
I rushed the shore. I couldn’t stop. Waves
pushed at my head. I left Bristol. I left the skin
of the streets there. I left my wife wondering
if she would jump up when she heard my steps
up the path close to the smoke house where
we cured the bacon her father fattened.
Stones were thrown. The wake of the ripples
caught my hands and I was frozen in the water
Follows missing pages to the tale
kept by his descendant Simon Colman
and published in London in 1767.