Nels Hanson
thistles stretch their prickly arms afar
Night Thoughts
Moonlight through the tilted slats of blinds
invented in Persia historians say, brought
by daring Italian traders to a city of legend
and canals, gondolas, singing gondoliers
pushing poles through its muddy shallows
floats across my floor a raft loosely woven
of raffia, the coarse palm frond brown hands
stitch into hats. Lucky my river is laminate
and not the slender Rio Grande’s foul waters
tonight a black-haired woman with a black-
haired child sets sail on, her blown-up rubber
ark you see on lakes in summer or wafting
sleepers circling backyard pools. Hours ago
the TV newsman explained those voyagers
are refugees, escaping from the country of
El Salvador, which means “The Savior” in
another language. Blood keeps falling there
like heavy rain turned red until even fishes
fail to navigate a thicker element. Old Rivers
of Babylon, River Styx, Acheron the Greek
“River of Woe,” Truckee River and Kings
the Japanese crossed toward the desert camp
at Manzanar, narrow stream called Jordan
where a white dove flew down, descending
envoy of the Holy Ghost as the long-haired
man who begins the long journey to a cross
is lifted by gentle cousin John to the surface
again, what city lies beyond green willows
on that farther bank, towers like wavering
mirages this dawn appearing about to fall?
Nels Hanson grew up on a small farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.