River Poem by S.Jagathsimhan Nair

River is no more the brew
You turn into water
Or a red line winding down
As a cold rebuke

Or a canine tail still wagging
despite a broken trust.
Imagine it as ice melted
Into words and deeds spent

Imagine it as fire roused
Into god and rain spending.
But not as water that fills
And loathes the hollows drilled

Into its banks of froth by
the sand-miners digging its heart
And it is really not what it is.
While unmaking itself to

vanish into the waste land
to live like a mother long dead.