| Nobody comes from this place, though they may have been born here.
And all the poets that wake up in this Minnesota place eventually move
on. They move on to find the place that they really they came from - the
place where they really belong.
You can stand here, like me and the others, and just watch the river flow. And of all this water flowing south, too, you can know... or you can imagine you know... where it is going and what it will be like when it gets there. All you will really ever know of this river town is that it is here, now, and it won't be here later. It will have been replaced by something which looks and feels exactly like it. It will have been pushed away by something different, yet something exactly the same. So , it seems perfectly natural that as I sit here thinking, with my head held by my hand, my arm resting on my knee; that my arm becomes wet. I think that it is because I have started to cry. OK, for now. But when I open my eyes my arm is stained red. I think that somehow I must be bleeding. My nose is bleeding. And I can't tell the difference between this running river which is my nose and the bleeding of the earth, which is this river which we have all been watching for as long as anyone can remember.
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