by AJ Standish
I was going to write that
sitting by the river is like recharging a battery
but the river knows nothing of batteries
and I am human and do not need to be plugged in
but I do need to sit by the river
and watch the way it moves
to everywhere and nowhere
so I can realize that my thoughts
do not need to move anywhere
or even move at all
it is enough just to be
and the river is one of the only things
that does not ask anything from me
I love the Huron with all my heart
the way it has seen so much
it flows through Native American burial ground
land sacred and saturated with the spiritual,
it cuts through the evil of colonization,
of buildings and a town erected
on top of its sanctity,
it says you build what you build,
a road, a bridge with three prongs,
I am still here
and you cannot stop me
I love its amber color,
the way it bubbles over the dam
frothy foam surging over the rocks
I’ve watched the ducks raise their young,
they wait and watch their little line of ducklings,
making sure everyone is ready
and then they inch closer to the dam
and let the water carry them over,
and the line of ducklings follows
one by one,
little fluffy bundles of tender life
flowing with the water
The Huron is a constant
It’s the background of my life
and if I didn’t have to get up
and take the bus
and go sell my time for a paycheck
it would be the foreground
Before I found Ypsilanti
I lived in a city
that was nothing but a freeway
and houses clustered together
like people in line at an amusement park
There was one park that was a baseball field
and clusters of yellow grass
I would go behind the trees
to the ditch that sometimes filled with water
Thinking that was the closest I would get
to a river,
I would cross the ditch
and go sit by the railroad tracks
and watch the cars of freight
all going somewhere
in a rush to sell something
to meet a quota
When I had my first job interview in Ypsilanti
and walked to the apartment I’d applied for,
I crossed the bridge over Riverside Park
and I fell in love
I thought:
this is home
and it was,
and it is
Lately I’ve been worried
the river will be taken from me
You can’t grab a river
and put it in a backpack
transport it over state lines
and sell it for profit,
you can’t put it on a train
and rush it to a processing center
to be inspected and weighed
determine its worth
and find the highest bidder
to take it away
But you can fill it with black sludge
you can suck it dry
you can channel it
into a data center
and extract it into a cooling system
you can steal its wisdom
to make intelligence that isn’t real
you can drain it to
the mud at the bottom
and let the ducks and their webbed feet
get stuck and wonder
why nothing will carry them
Imagine explaining it to the ducks
I want to analyze a spreadsheet
without lifting a finger,
so you must die
Imagine telling the fish
I need to see what a computer
thinks I would have looked like
in the third grade
so you must die
Imagine telling the deer
I need to send an email
without writing a message myself,
so you must die
The ducks know nothing of spreadsheets
the fish know nothing of posts
the deer know nothing of email
They will never know their murderers
only their death
Imagine telling a baby
you cannot have clean water
you cannot have a place to go
that quiets your thoughts
and sets you free
you cannot have something
that flows over the harsh grooves
of your worried brain
and tucks your spirit to bed
inside your body
because we have decided that
we are not animals anymore
we have decided
that we are a series of numbers
that we don’t need solid ground
and that we must take it away
and grind it into powder
to feed a monster
that is never full
and will never fill
feed it until there is nothing
to stand on,
and then what do we have
besides putrid clouds
of toxic black smoke
that our feet will fall through
and it will suck that in too
because when you are poison
you cannot be poisoned
and you must live
to feed the monster
you must live
to be poisoned
The baby knows nothing of poison
they don’t know that the water
mixed with their formula
is tainted by data
but they will grow up knowing
they can filter their face
through a screen
to look like a superhero
that they can take a picture
and make it dance
they don’t know
that the price is their life
The river knows
centuries of life
it knows bodies buried
under the weight of years
it knows spirits emerging
from the depth of the ground
it knows ancient traditions
and years of change
The river does not know Los Alamos
it does not know University of Michigan
it does not know AI
and data
it knows what is real
and what is true
what is humanity
I am not trying to save the Huron
the Huron will save itself
and find a way to go on
I’m trying to save us
from poison coming from faucets
from air that tastes chemical
from a world without a place
to go to be quiet
from a town
without a background
and a foreground
The Huron knows
tears of joy and sorrow
it says I gave you water
and you return it through your eyes
Two handmade effigies are offered and taken by the river at the local Sacrifice of Marzanna festival. March 2026.
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AJ Standish is a 25 year old poet living in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He’s been writing poetry for as long as he can remember. Much of his work is a reflection of our time, and how poetry is resistance in a world that does everything it can to eliminate art.
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This is an original poem, brought to you by Poet Tree Town, a Washtenaw-based poetry-in-public initiative and celebration of local poets. Find out more about Poet Tree Town on Instagram and Facebook, or say hello at [email protected].
