Finding Paradise in River Pretty, Missouri

by Richard Jackson

When Dante finally arrived there he had no words

for it.

The frog giggers in the river must think

their spotlight is their way to revelation.

The dam’s

been broke for years, the mills broken wheels turn back

to a time before time, if they turn at all.

The evening sky

still leans down over the ridge line as if it wanted to be

water.

The river rubs against the ledge rock.

Here we are

far from beheadings and crucifixions in what was once

the land of paradise, a word that came from the Persian

meaning an enclosed park.

They must have had this place

in mind.

One trout tries for but misses the Jesus bug

that skates away.

At night the bats will take what the fish

missed.

Plato thought we are born with a memory of Paradise.

Imparadise’d in one another’s arms is what Milton said.

I think that owl wants to be the moon.

He knows

Paradise is the life you’ve hidden from yourself.

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Richard Jackson’s latest books are The Heart as Framed: New and Select Poems (Press 53) and Dispatches: Prose Poems (Wet Cement). He is a winner of Guggenheim, Fulbright, NEA, NEH and Witter.-Byner Fellowships and the Order of Freedom from the President of Slovenia for literary and humanitarian work in the Balkans.