Rivers flow with water and blood
above earth’s bedrock and my own
carved out from the beat of a steady flow.
Banks erode, sometimes
bursting, or crumbling slow.
Older beds are no longer smooth;
broken branches snagged
and embedded roughly in the
now-gravelled surface below.
My skin and earth’s, bruised
and channeled by our river’s glow.
As the drying out continues
to thicken and slow
river’s course is brought low.
Finally, so dry it comes to an end
and our efforts to amend
cannot stop its final show.
Dried rivers of water or of blood
cannot sustain life
while we foolishly wonder
“Where did the rivers go?”
annarino writes 