Serpentine

What keeps you on the planet—
absurdly orange flecks peppered
against a blackbird’s wing—
a sunset that took everything
down with it?

At eye-level,
the river is nothing
but current. Around newly-fallen rocks,
it winds its way through darkness
and harbors no illusions, having already

been ravished at the edges
by winter. The sun
rarely came, or barely stayed,
waylaid by shadow
that kept most of it out.

The evergreens branch out, reach for nothing but 
the everlasting. In quiet,
the river is swept along
by moonlight, into the mineral depths
from which it will never come back.