I wish I were the river. Its power now
in flood obliterates
everything it once thought about itself:
on the valley stones, on this winter floor among the rocks
it slides through its own skin like a big brown snake.

Elsewhere, perhaps, it's become a lake
for migrating birds, snowflakes or reflections of low
clouds;
elsewhere, almost unimaginably, past pipes and drums,
the luxury of knotted towns and confluence, oil in the
estuary
and wharves where ships no longer build,
it's become the sea

turns blue in August, is mackerel-tide,
or salt-secreting cell in the anemone's claw,
disperses until the salmon smell it out,
...