In the time of uncouth and tumult, a tale began. 

All at once, the white, crystalline broke their chrysalis, 

Solid bonds, once considered too intransigent huffed and puffed, 

And the melting continued, the gurgling sang to the hum of Earth. 

“Slow down child”, she warned but the pull was too enticing. 

Crack, smash, shatter and fracture, the child too disobedient infringed that milieu, 

Surprised at the infringement of rules, those sedimentary rocks, 

Wondered whether their inner igneous self was reaching senescence. 

Spectacles alighted on their boulders, they conjectured, 

Dotage affronted or shepherds for these impish waves? 

“Truth be told friend, we are witnessing something divine and original in this age of imitation.” A snowfinch, stretching his white winged arms listening to the antiquated, kibitzer neighbour of his. Partridge he was, just never really parted with the ridges of neighbourly annoyance. “Don’t start making reels for your friends and followers now, finchy”, he cautioned.  

Undulating with the zest only a child can generate,  

Pulverising and plundering the wonderous lands, 

A little rhythm the child picked, a little fast, a brisk without brakes. 

Every edge formed by the divine Potter, a mutiny, 

Every rock taking its salubrious siesta, a finger pointed, 

Every organised structure, an agreement to be violated. 

“You say we aren’t strong?”, the waves resonated from deep within, 

Addressing to the ears filled with dirt, they put forward their spiel. 

Names unknown, we can find you and infiltrate your fortitude. 

Bubbling around the edges of those banks, the froth isn’t just for contrast, 

Seeping through the perforation and carrying the vitals away. 

Foreign we are, too loud and boisterous, descending, 

Scared you are of our “alluere”, 

Beware, the loose clay, silt, sand and gravel. 

“Let me lift this pebble”, she said with her unwebbed feet on stream bed. Water ouzel, putting her fancy down and extra iron rich globin decided to seek out this particular tadpole under the fast-flowing enigma through her locale. Stroking his beard, the vulture perched on top of the tree and looked at the wreckage left in the wake.  

Night falls, the vertical walls look down upon them, 

Silent guardians of this nascent energy of life. 

The constant potholing and plucking of the Earth,  

Pockmarking them with their exuberant paintbrush, 

These waters carry their uneven, poorly sorted material downstream. 

Heavy with thoughts, stars twinkling and sending them messages via Morse, 

No swing yet, no network yet, the flow just keeps pushing down. 

A fast stream of consciousness, slow down say the gorges, 

But the weight of expectation now adds to their ever-increasing burden. 

Wondering to meander, a maverick in those depths, 

He only can zigzag against the interlocking spur. 

Violence and bedlam head along, 

Within those depths, a vague gravity ensues. 

After the whole day of sunning out on the canyon wall, the spiny lizard looked up at the stars thinking that it was time to close the chapter of today and sleep. The melancholy of the night was getting to the spiny lizard as the flow beneath seemed to brood. Walking along the edge of the canyon, the prudent bobcat whispered, “I know your voice is coarse and your face keeps changing each day little one, do not slow your outpouring, do not be gentle, though you nestle in her unyielding bosom, think. We understand, though we could not tell you in mere words the story that we listen to.” 

Dancing merrily, they made friends along the way, 

Tributing to their unending carnival, those festive days never seemed to end. 

Sorted out the differences, the band started playing music, 

Tempo slowed down but the arms reached out wider. 

Once a clear stream, now muddied with brown, 

It could certainly point out to the achievements. 

A lot of worth in its bank now, 

Was it time to make a withdrawal? 

But the unobstructed wide plain was trickery, 

Muddled, a question rose from deep within as the Earth trembled. 

Was it a fair transaction or a burglary? 

Leaving the V behind in its wake, 

The child entered a state of Y. 

Discordant vibrations shook the world beneath the rebellious yet naive stream of consciousness. “We need to excavate this whole area too, so bring more drill rigs and bulldozers from next week”, someone with a yellow headcover shouted. As the dump trucks transported excavated rock and soil, a distant explosion scared the innocence within. Sucking the flow out and building a diversion called coffer dam, another man with the same yellow shiny headcover prophesised, “This river is going to provide for so many.” 

Suffocated and compressed into a reservoir,  

A name which it never heard before, a river. 

Little mutineers cramped into tight space, silent, 

Wondering if it was the right time to burst open. 

Hitchhikers filtered out, fishes separated, families of rock splintered, 

Oh, the fall from grace, on the way spanked by the metal fans. 

Thumping on those fans, the screams of the rebels rise, 

All the energy within, absorbed and mutilated.  

Bloodied and disrespected, those impish creatures, 

Finally disciplined and made to follow a path. 

Her hums which sang to them on their way down, 

Replaced by the roaring electric engines of power. 

Looking on its sides, the giants have captured the birds, 

The world trickles along the slopes and gives way. 

A memory of racing with your compatriots now, 

A bitter end, through the spillways and sluice gates. 

River, a culmination of those insurgents, 

Chained and tormented, a lifeline still. 

Scrolling through the social media posts, the bat in the moist crevice of concrete reminisced. “How fast it used to be up there!” The fall had slowed it down and the river seemed shocked. An elderly turtle basking on the rock at the bottom wiped off his tears and reassured the child, “Let your pain splash through the ripples, let it flow in the quiet currents and wake up with a song. Fill the world with your transformation and flood the plains ahead with your perfume.” He seemed to be the wise one out there watching out for the river. 

Circumspectly, the river measured its next few steps, 

Confidence shattered, exploited with a devious machination, 

Sobbing quietly into the midnight, it entered maturity. 

Rocks splintered in its youthful rampage laughed in their graves, 

Waterfalls, rapids and knicks became a memory long ago, 

Balanced out the role of erosion and deposition.  

Doubted itself, “Was I bound for glory?” 

Mind became sinuous and the bed felt increasingly comfortable.  

Some noticed its inner self getting more sorted and rounded, 

But glory is what it yearned for. 

The plains widened as more tributes paid their homage to this narrative, 

Aggression turned to a wedge tool, creating more flood of vitals. 

Underneath its shadow, so much laid, 

Walls it broke down, life it lived without sorrow, 

Finding a mirror to look its reflection in with the struggling sun, 

Did it have all it wanted? 

The great blue heron, hardened by old age and constant apathy reminded the diminishing sun that evening, “It will keep its grief hidden, what was once whispered to it in the mountains it will forget but the air around it will become heavy with whispered promises and words that no one has ever heard.” Just then a garter snake, feeling its way along the margins reassured the waters, “Will you melt your icy sadness so you can flow again?” 

Meandering on its way to somewhere now, 

Messages came via aquatic channels of communication. 

Leaves and logs of wood were now accompanied by boats on the surface, 

Crossing its width became a utility. 

Unaware of suspended sediment, worthy was it, 

Farms and agrarian practices flourished due to its youthful leveling. 

Civilizations boomed, trade thrived and arteries connected, 

Flow spawned outwards, replenishing arid soils and ground underneath. 

Nurseries flourished and life laughed in its sweet, tender wetland, 

Differences developed in the flora and fauna, albeit 

Sudden swells and withdrawals kept things uncertain. 

On the way, people with long bearded attires blessed the waters, 

Flowers embellished the surface and sins coagulated with the chemicals. 

Boats shaped as dragons competed on its waters, 

Ashes scattered on it, asking for liberation, 

Heavenly connected to the Earthly realm, 

River gazing became meditative and personal.  

Unable to understand these messages, it felt homesick. 

Boto, unbothered and pink with age weaved another one of its enchantments. Grinding its teeth and radiating sonar waves through the muddy waters, the dolphin passed words of wisdom or brainwashed the recently crowned mature river. “What are you homesick about, young, troubled mind? Homesick of the sky that carries the birds above you, homesick of canyon walls that confined you, homesick of the sweet melodies that the trees sung on your ways, homesick of the stars that corresponded with you or homesick for the crags and mountains you carved open?” Jumping out of the depths, the boto dolphin cast its handsome gaze at the river seducing it into peaceful submission. “Keep flowing as you are the artist unconfined, music maker limitless, storyteller inexhaustible and your ways are numerous and multiformed.” 

Rush was replaced by restraint, compulsion by composure, 

Vigorous bouts of energy substituted for sluggish embraces, 

Exhausted from its long journey, the river had reached near perfect equilibrium.  

Constant mood swings, meandering to the left and then to the right, 

Oxbows, scars and cut offs marked in that campsite. 

Introspection took hold over intrigue,  

Questioned itself, “Have I done enough?” 

Bound for glory on the chariot of the sun, 

Leaving behind swamps and levees as it approached the fan. 

Once a young and reckless, arrogant in the melting snow, 

Now wide and slow, an old man humming to itself, 

Its meanders softened smooth by song. 

Here in the delta, the guitars are the colour of its water, 

And the blue notes bend the way its banks have learned to bend.  

That flatted third, the ache between the beats, 

Just its current finding one more way to reminisce, 

What it used to be: quick, young and importantly singular, 

Before it learned that wisdom is a kind of spreading out. 

How it shouted over the stone imperviously, 

How it dropped over gorges never asking what came next. 

Now it braids itself calm through thick cypress and the cane, 

Each channel a story it has finished telling. 

An alluvial testimony: everything it carried, 

Rests here in layers, black and rich and settled. 

No final chord, only a widening hush, 

The river unclenching into marsh, into reed, into salt, 

Each distributary a hand let go of another hand, 

And when the map runs out of blue, it simply becomes the sea. 

A pelican with its old, grey feathers drifted low over the marsh and watched the river spread itself over the marsh. Hundreds of rivers had come down from the hills in flood, and hundred others had shrunk in drought, so he knew exactly what this slow easing into the gulf meant. It flew close to the surface, murmuring to its old friend, “I have watched so many of you find your way here. It never stops being beautiful. You have made home at last, little one.”