David Marquis - The River Always Wins

PRAISE FOR
The River Always Wins

My eyes were opened, jaw dropped, mind expanded, and heart filled with myriad meanings of Water. I was truly inspired.

Trammell S. Crow, Founder, EarthX,
the worlds largest environmental experience

The River Always Wins is a welcome spiritual field guide for social movement activists in these uncertain times.

Rev. Dr. Andrea Ayvazian,
Founder and Director,
Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership

This book is a moving testimony of a longing that lies deep in our hearts, inviting us to embody it in our own lives, and gift it for the entire world.

Ruben L.F. Habito, Guiding Teacher,
Maria Kannon Zen Center

David Marquis words are as rhythmic as running water and remind us of both the spiritual and ecological place that rivers have in our lives.

Andrew Sansom, Founder of The Meadows Center
for Water and the Environment and former
Executive Director of Texas Parks and Wildlife

An expert on water conservation and supply, David Marquis has created a work that is both instructive and entertaining. No spoiler alert that the river always wins.

Eric Nadel, Texas Rangers Radio Announcer,
2014 Ford C. Frick Award Recipient

The timeliness of this book that reads with the rhythm of a musical composition is remarkable. The River Always Wins reminds us that just like the water in the river that is, we as humanity are becoming. Rising up and reborn as headwaters, collectively flowing through rapids, over sandbars, and around fallen trees, we are, nevertheless, moving toward the greater goodshaping the rock and transforming hearts along the way.

Cynthia Seale, Trinity Waters

I so appreciate David Marquis spirit and determination. He once gave me a handprinted card that says: Be water, my friend. David himself follows that concept, constantly flowing around corners and fearlessly leaping into the unknown to discover how to make the world a better bluegreen place to be.

Jim Levitt, Fellow,
Harvard Forest, Harvard University

The River Always Wins

David Marquis

water
as a metaphor
for
hope and progress

A LYRIC ESSAY

Dallas, Texas

La Reunion Publishing, an imprint of Deep Vellum
3000 Commerce St., Dallas, Texas 75226

deepvellum.org @deepvellum

DeepVellum is a 501c3 nonprofit literary arts organization founded
in 2013 with the mission to bring the world into conversation
through literature.

9781646050529 (hardcover)
978-1-64605-008-6 (paperback) | 978-1-64605-007-9 (ebook)

Copyright 2020 by David M. Marquis

First edition 2020

All rights reserved

Support for this publication has been provided in part by
grants from the National Endowment for the Arts,
the Texas Commission on the Arts,
the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Cultures ArtsActivate program,
and the Moody Fund for the Arts:

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER: 2020932576

Cover design by Justin Childress | justinchildress.co
Interior Layout and Typeset by Kirby Gann

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For Diana Navarrete Marquis, my wife

a love that quenches like clear water

But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

AMOS 5:24, OLD TESTAMENT

Blest be the Streams from hills of snow,

sweet be spring Waters unto thee.

Sweet be swift-running Waters, sweet to

thee be Water of the Rains.

ATHARVAVEDA BOOK 19, HYMN 2
HINDU SCRIPTURE

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In 1995 when Ron Kirk became the first African American mayor in the history of Dallas, I wrote a poem for an inaugural event about a river that made its way to the sea.

That thought stayed with me and became the genesis for this book.

I would also like to acknowledge my good friend Bud Melton. Over a cup of coffee, he made a remark about the flow of water. Years later, his comment came back to me and sparked a theme in Chapter Six regarding floods and rapids. Thank you, Bud.

Decades ago I explored the work of the late novelist John Gardner. He wrote once of an exchange between a waitress and an old farmer during a drought in a small New England town. Its been so long that I dont even remember the characters names, but the tone of their conversation has always stayed with me, given that I grew up in drought-stricken West Texas.

I want to acknowledge Becky Raider, naturalist extraordinaire, who supplied me with information about the age of the water in the Great Trinity Forest. Thanks as well go to Vikram Agrawal for his aid in deepening my understanding of Hindu scripture regarding water.

Many friends listened intently and with great passion as I read them Chapter One. Their responses tapped a deep well within me that led to the creation of this work. They include Eric Nadel, Betsy Del Monte, Keisha Whaley, Ruben Habito, Cynthia Seale, Andrea Ayvazian, Melanie Ferguson, John Matthews, Ben Mackey, Robin Sachs, Vynsie Law, Andy Sansom, Brent Brown, Willis Winters, Doug Wright, Steve Smith, Janice Bezanson, Molly Plummer, Robert Kent, Denise Lee, Scott Shirley, and many others. Lizbet and Adrien Palmer and Josh and Carlee Kumler provide emotional and spiritual support in ways they will never know.

I especially want to thank Garrett Boone, Trammell S. Crow, Claude C. Albritton, Jacques Vroom III, and Edwin Cabaniss for their support and encouragement.

Will Evans is not only a fine publisher but a skilled editor as well, and Clyde Valentin deserves thanks for introducing us. The cover illustration by Justin Childress grabbed me the moment I saw it, and Kirby Ganns design and layout are beautifully crafted.

Finally, I would like to thank my friend and colleague Neeki Bey, who read a first draft and said, Thats not it. He was right. He told me to keep writing and to pare the material down to its essence. This is the book that came from his wise words.

David Marquis

Dallas, Texas

April 2020

On a broad plain outside Taos, New Mexico, leading to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, a bridge spans a deep, narrow gorge, and at the bottom of the steep rock walls is a river, the Rio Grande.

The water roaring below, so distant as to be silent in its rushing, did not begin its long journey to the Gulf of Mexico at the bottom of the gorge.

It began on the top, on the surface, and over more years than can be knownthe way the indigenous know the time to plant corn or a mother knows to stroke a childs hair or even in the soulless counting of seconds within a digital timepiecethe water found and caressed and forced its way through rock. When the snowmelt ran plentiful, the water worked on the rock. When drought came, the water, though less, worked on the rock.

At no time did the water ever stop working on the rock. A single trickle, a single drop, constituted the whole of water itself, for its purpose and its nature are known to itself.

And what is the nature of the river?

The river is made of drops. Every river in the worldthe Ganges, the Nile, the Hudson, the Amazon, the Mississippiis made of drops. One drop is one drop is every drop.

Rivers, ancient as days, may differ in the life along their banks, their depth, or the frequency of their flooding, but one thing is true: if enough drops flow together in the same direction long enough, the river always wins.