The river song
It’s the road that dogs the river there
and erratic swerves around the swell,
a besotten banker sounds his threats
astride the crease, the fen. Where the creek
might flood the dyke with florid muck
and afterbirth I strike the bank
to cause it to yield and decay, to bring
about the final days, the fire
that exhales thick steam and exhumes our fears
forgot. I strike no ore.
In the straits,
aground amidst the greening blooms
of algae beset by alcoves of silt,
a votive thing to the vagrant rich
whose flightpaths haunt the valley here.
I gather the corrugated sheet
to my shoulder and wade through lurid waste
to find the spires felled and raised,
and my swaddling spreads about the spine
and enclosed we drift the clay becalmed.
A curlew wails alone.
The way
to town is swollen with idols, whose wan,
effusive faces fall to the earth,
and whose long, contorted limbs point out
towards the stream. I search the stars
that quell their kin, and quietly I speak
the held aloft, examined, and left
to fall, and bathed by force in brine,
and caked in silt I go to slight
appeals for turgid peace that we tore
away the river’s mouth.
