Idolatry

I am measuring the bank with a heavy cord

7 feet of rising silt against the pier

I am calling you Mississippi

Because you move through the center of me

From the top of the map to the delta

2000 miles of moving muscle (Moving muscle)

Oh, Mississippi

You take the heavy soil from my floor

You are the only proper noun I speak

100 years of constant water

I am swept toward the mouth

We pass St. Louis in the thick humidity

We are Cairo, where the two currents meet

The Ohio is a cold, pale sister

But you are the big, brown authority

12 barges carry the weight of my devotion

Steaming through the middle of the night

Oh, Mississippi

You take the heavy soil from my floor

You are the only proper noun I speak

100 years of constant water

I am swept toward the mouth

The levee broke and the world went under

I did not look for high ground

I did not want to be saved

I wanted to sink into the name of you

Deep in the basin

Under the pressure of the tide

New Orleans is waiting

The Gulf is opening its salt arms

Zero

Everything is zero now

No more land

Just the flow (Mississippi, Mississippi, zero)