Cole Swensen, _Gave_

NOT THE PAST tense of "give," in this case, but a river in southwest France, the Gave de Pau. Like Landscapes on a Train, worth reading in one go if you can manage it, and like that volume too in its pondering of what it means to move and what it means to stand still.

You walk alongside the river. No; you walk always with. Not down, or along, or beside. And you can't help but measure--is it moving faster? And does that mean each molecule of wtaer? Or does a body of water form internal bodies, pockets that move in counterpoint, in back-beat, in eddies? And does the surface ever move? Or is it something underneath that does?

The river is moving constantly, yet also in another way exactly where it has been for centuries. After all, it has a history traceable in the histories of the towns on its banks, which also come in for some attention in the poem. They too are basically where they have long been--but are they the same cities they were? They have moved along in time as the river's water has moved along in its current, the town arriving in its Now as the river arrives at the ocean...except "the river doesn't end / in the sea."

What? But then you think, she's right. It does not end in the sea because in some respects it is still right there beside the town: "rivers so / often seem to run, but / there's a part of them / that never moves again / in their stones."

The phrase "philosophical poem" suggests heavy lifting, effort and aridity, wrestling in a sand dune. Somehow, Swensen a provides a phenomenological meditation that is never anything but swift and nimble-footed.