Our Deep Water poem for Independence Day weekend comes to us from Richard Blanco, who writes in the voice of the Río Grande River. This powerful poetic monologue asks us to consider what it means to make a border out of a natural feature far older than nations, and what it means to divide people using flowing water that, as Blanco writes, “was meant for all things to meet.”

Blanco is the fifth presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history – the first Latino, immigrant and gay person to serve in such a role. His latest book of poems, “How to Love a Country” (Beacon Press, 2019), both interrogates the American narrative, past and present, and celebrates the still unkept promise of its ideals. He lives with his partner in Bethel.

 

Complaint of El Río Grande

By Richard Blanco

for Aylin Barbieri

 

I was meant for all things to meet:

to make the clouds pause in the mirror

of my waters, to be home to fallen rain

that finds its way to me, to turn eons

of loveless rock into lovesick pebbles

and carry them as humble gifts back

to the sea which brings life back to me.

 

I felt the sun flare, praised each star

flocked about the moon long before

you did. I’ve breathed air you’ll never

breathe, listened to songbirds before

you could speak their names, before

you dug your oars in me, before you

created the gods that created you.

 

Then countries—your invention—maps

jigsawing the world into colored shapes

caged in bold lines to say: you’re here,

not there, you’re this, not that, to say:

yellow isn’t red, red isn’t black, black is

not white, to say: mine, not ours, to say

war, and believe life’s worth is relative.

 

You named me big river, drew me—blue,

thick to divide, to say: spic and Yankee,

to say: wetback and gringo. You split me

in two—half of me us, the rest them. But

I wasn’t meant to drown children, hear

mothers’ cries, never meant to be your

geography: a line, a border, a murderer.

 

I was meant for all things to meet:

the mirrored clouds and sun’s tingle,

birdsongs and the quiet moon, the wind

and its dust, the rush of mountain rain—

and us. Blood that runs in you is water

flowing in me, both life, the truth we

know we know: be one in one another.

 

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Complaint of El Río Grande,” from How To Love A Country: Poems by Richard Blanco. Copyright © 2019 by Richard Blanco. Reprinted with permission from Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts.