Saturday, May 02, 2009

Oxbow

An absence of temperate
seasonality
back and forth between guilt
and liberty
want and should
gin and tonic
in monsoon country.

The river ran red
brown
full
fast
furious
and we didn’t want it…

Now it is dry
mud caked and cracked
stagnant in emptiness
and depletion
and the children stand
with their toes in the mud
in the middle of a channel-
an oxbow stranded
by dwindling currents
holding only fevers.

3 comments:

RachelW said...

Nice... This one took me away.

Karen said...

This is excellent! It is a visual and sensory description that reveals the setting and the conflictedness. Is this the human condition -- never to be satisfied with what we have?

KGT (aka Cagey) said...

Thanks Rachel!

Thank you, too, Karen, as always.I think the human condition is to want things when they are not available.