POETRY: Riverbed

You can hear the river sing from a hundred footsteps past
and feel the sweet wind’s breath that blows it hot and cold
into a mist that halos those that sip its waters
with smiling mouths that echo trills and ripples over stones

Crystal clear and pure the surface rushes on
hiding in transparency the grains of sand it picks from time
and mosaics into patterns that can please the easy eye
without the fingers of disturbance in its bed

She tiptoes close and closer, stoops and rubs sienna
from the banks into the creases of her beliefs and truths
yet knows she is too bent, too pale, too unyielding and
in the absence of the sunglow, her tongue tastes bitter grit