POKELOGAN

Here she will come to rest, mother of weeds,
stanching into algaed waters,
grey waters, red and green
and brown. She will come to a slow.
A stir of mayflies on her surface. Among her reeds,
a slicked brown mammal slips under her skirts
and is mud. She comes slow grown down,
roots down into silt and stillness.

Among the cricket song a yellowed eye that blinks,
scales, a tail that fans the shallows.
The flit of dead leaves falling like drift rain.
She has come and will not come again.