The River Mystery Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

Dry river mystery

The river in the domestic landscape was not as big
as it used to be, for years, the rain upland fell sparsely
when the hot summer came, the river dried up.
The river bed was eerily white with a massive overhang
spikey plants as a scar of lumpy skin after heart surgery.
Of the farmer's four children, three liked to play
in this mysterious scenery of skull-like rocks, when lifted
had pockets of water like there was a hidden stream
under the bed, the fourth child had an instinctive fear
of the dry river's strangeness and kept away.
When the summer was over, rain of epic proportion
came to the mountain where the river's nascent began.
Suddenly a wall of water ran faster than a train
drowning all in its rouse to meet the sea.
The farmer whose wife had died when giving birth
to the fourth child was devasted, those will lose
tongues blamed him for being thoughtless.
Of the surviving child, nothing is known, fading away
as never born.