Fluent, Obdurate

Watch the river: it’s a torrent downstream.

A fluency of tongues penetrates

then liquifies our liminal umbral.

You swell like a pregnant animal,

clamber up steep embankments

towards the strange city above.

Sparrows and herons fly through mist

with blue wind on the wing drifting

upwards, they move past mountain ranges

further away.

In the humid night air your voice meanders

around, then right through me,

although the day we met may yet disappear.

Oleander washes the evening awake and fragrant 
as distinct, floating voices

distract our six senses.

Crowds of rocks settled down on river bottom

don’t easily move under acres of water.

If a flood from the uplands smashes fast

and strong, these stones of memory

may tumble and roll.

And our time together, solid but weightless,

dissolve into clouds of scattered feathers

or few grains of fools’s gold.