after the flood

they will find 
  something unexpected
glimpsed
   through ripples
       down where silt settles 
           a clear current slashes
the transcanada’s jugular
 and something sparkles 
  from a crack in drowned concrete
            reborn riverbed
                  here, good omens lay
         and what they once lost
resurfaces

            knees to bank, they beckon:
pass abolition, cupped and wet
            between a generosity of palms
                                    open-shelled to a future
                                                                    where:

                             each grain of gold harvested
                      from the warmth of these wounds
                             is transubstantial: a table is set
            a feast of johnnycakes warm as suns demonstrates
                     how gold now finds itself
                             a homonym in sustenance
                                         a wealth hymnal in its devotion
                                                     to life without property
                             they have sung to this
                             they sing to it whenever
                     old shining standards
            reveal themselves washed out, eroded,
                                                                    toast

                                                                       toast
                                                                       to plenty
                                                                       to depths
                                                                       to darkness
                                                                       to what sleeps in their open arms
                                                                       to what wakes when it needs to be fed
                                                                                                                                     and is
                                                                                                     fed.


Trynne Delaney is a writer currently based in Tiohtià:ke. Their writing consists mostly of musings about how we got here, where we are, who “we” encompasses, and how to care in a violent world and exist in spaces that are hostile to multiplicity. Read more of her writing in carte blanche and GUTS magazine. More: trynnedelaney.com