River Mighty
She can still be turbulent, the river mighty
Though on a summer’s day she’s but a
placid flow
She was clear, clear like crystal, tasted
good too
Not so now, there’s fertilizer and matter
they call faecal
Take a sip, get a dose of the trots… or
worse!
On her terrace high I sit, mulling like a
grinder
Of stones smoothed by sand, water and shifted
by floods
Weather and time tumbling mountains coastward.
Made her bed
A wide-mile, or more. Flows of brown, surging
water, silt and stone
Stratifying, layer upon layer this terrace
five stories high… or more.
Imagine tall mountains, now worn into
hills
Pre of the brown man, and pre of time measurement
Turning rain to water in volumes that went
uncounted
No remains of life lay squeezed between
the strata, not even charred
Life may decay over time but the stones
stay… much the same.
She bends as if to curtsy in a graceful S
As she powers her way out to the sea. No
longer a playground
For long-finned eels, inanga (still called
silveries by me) or cockabullies
They’re all but gone. Gunk in the water to
make them puke… or die
Habitat in decline. But hey! They tax us …
for ‘river management’!
A pretty river, once lined with willows, back
in memory
But ‘river managers’ sprayed them dead. Weeds
now proliferate
And roads must be paved, so they chomp at
her bed… ‘in a managed way’
Her bed is now lower, even deeper than I
am tall!
Machine tracks gouge and tattoo her… vibrancy’s
gone.
No stones to replenish on the hills to wash
down
But in Nature’s laws, forces afoot, there’s
always a pattern
Nature and time, unbended by man, in a
process so slow
Mountains to hills, to peneplain flat. A buckling
crust
An uplift so violent, landscapes reform… and
the demise of man?
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