Questions for a River:
List Poem by Simmons Buntin

Questions for a River

Confluence of the North and East Forks of the Lewis River
Two Forks Wildlife Area, Washington
 

1. Where are your headwaters?
    
   On the western slope of a fiery throat.
    
2. Where do you end?
    
   There is no end, there is only flow.
    
3. How do you flow?
    
   Upriver, dammed—
   but here, at last, the full body of myself.
    
4. Who swims in your waters?
    
   Salmon and salmon peoples.
    
5. Who else swims in your waters?
    
   Lamprey and longfin, mussel and midge,
   mother and daughter, father and son.
    
6. Where is your voice?
    
   Beneath propellor and keel, my chorus is strong—
   the powerboats have not always muffled my song.
    
7. Who sings from your shore?
    
   Have you heard the belted kingfisher’s morning trill?
   The song sparrow’s lyric in the evening still?
   The treep and click of the dipper seeking her fill?
    
8. How do you rage?
    
   In the storm’s sweet fury, or
   patiently, for all bridges and levees eventually fail.
    
9. What have you learned?
    
   Flow is the highest form of being.
    
10. And what have you learned?
     
    We all are part of the savaged sea.

This excerpt was originally published in On Resilience: Stories of Climate Adaptation Across Washington’s Landscapes, by Harriet Morgan and Lindsay Senechal, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), and Writing the Land^® poets. It is reprinted with permission of WDFW, Writing the Land, and the authors.

It is the fourth of four excerpts from the anthology.

On Resilience is a poetry anthology created in partnership with NatureCulture^®’s Writing the Land program. The collection highlights how WDFW manages more than 1 million acres of land across Washington and documents the ways climate change is affecting ecosystems, including warming stream temperatures, shifting snowpack, increased wildfire risk, and changes in species’ seasonal patterns. Each section pairs place-based management summaries with poems inspired by specific wildlife areas, offering readers both a science-based understanding of how WDFW is adapting natural resource practices and a creative reflection on the connections between people, land, and climate.

Learn more and purchase the book.

Simmons Buntin is the author of two books of poetry, Bloom and Riverfall, as well as a collection of community case studies, Unsprawl: Remixing Spaces as Places, and Satellite: Essays on Fatherhood and Home, Near and Far (Trinity University Press, 2025). He is the founding editor of Terrain.org and lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Read an excerpt from Simmons Buntin’s Satellite, the essay “Stopover,” also appearing in Terrain.org.

Header photo of the Lewis River at the Two Forks Wildlife Area, Washington, by Simmons Buntin. Photo of Simmons Buntin by Chris Richards.