The River

High water carried her down stream.
She watched the water's living things.
She thought, it's not a mound with six planks of wood,
The cardinal points to hold you up,
Or a mountain where a shed self could

Feed the roots and honor the tongues of the animals.
Drift into the moss and bloat where the pete bog pulls.

Rolled like a felled tree
With arms as useless as such.
Death's panic came, a calmness stayed.
You couldn't do much.

Just watch the water chip away
At the bank eroding.
Cut and crumbling through the spate.

It took a father.
It covered a daughter,
Took her down, down, down.
With the glass bottles, books, a tire,
Collected hair tufts
In the weeds
Snagged and wrapped,
In the petes
Dammed and trapped.

You said, is this the ceremony?
I don't know, well I don't mind.
The way we all fall in and roll down
Pushed through the veins and trafficked bi-s.

And when your ears sit under,
Head is half submerged down below,
Pooling all accounts of peace while passed beneath
The canopy glow.