Big Bend

Ruins

the cool water laps the grey rumbling concrete
buzzing turbines churning life blood into power

this damn dam

past stories now submerged by the cruel machine
overwhelmed fallen trees emerge from this river
pantomiming the living as their lifeless limbs reach for the sky
defiantily proclaiming, “we are still here, you damn machine.”

the spoiling machine hears not the protest of the trees
its metal veins pump, churning out its vital pulses
ruining the ichor of the other, the river and its relatives

like this machine they call the Big Bend Dam this river too has a name
an ancient name forsaken, merely a rumor for some
her antediluvian epithet
the old ones still call to her softly

“Mni Sose,” they whisper
“we know you. we remember.”

Mni Sose

sometimes she answers
her tear ducts swell at her shores
she faces her ruiner
her machine
her immortal appendage

interrupted flows, she continues
a disrupting, calming current