Vienna Teng
The Riversitter (after Dave Eggers)
Come with me while the light is gold on the hill
And our day has hours left to go
There’s a place I’m told might be standing still
Out beyond the field of headstones
You don’t have to tell a tidy story
You don’t need a home for every hole
You can just sit in the river, let the river run to you
You don’t need to trace your last ancestor
You don’t need a family name of old
You can just sit in the river, let the river run you through
Come with me while the fennel shades the sourgrass
And the coyotes stretch out in the sun
There’s a manzanita rising beyond the pass
That long ago sheltered something I’d begun
You don’t have to tell a tidy story
You don’t need a home for every hole
You can just sit in the river, let the river rush to you
You don’t need to find and lose true love
You don’t need a twisting in your soul
You can just sit in the river, let the river run you through
You can just do a thing that you get the idea to do
Come with me while the wildfires keep their distance
And your time, unlike mine, has years to go
We’ll stand before the shutter, prove our shared existence
A museum of the rain that feeds the river flow
You don’t have to tell a tidy story
You don’t need a home for every hole
You can just sit in the river, let the river run to you
And maybe only ruin comes of everything
That once was our whole world
But someone may run with a thing we had the idea to do
So come on let’s search among the strangers
And the souvenirs
How gorgeous and grand you have grown
Sit with me among the branches
Of this chandelier
While flesh and blood remain between our bones
And I will show you the most precious thing I own