Some still need stones of holy brooks,
but spirits of most full-cycle rivers
dance only in museum exhibit wax eyes,
or on the rolls of film that killed them.
Rachel still weeps while Dioxin fruits
leach into corporate bodies of work now
faceless, fueled by rancid corks igniting,
bobbing together in sweet crude.
Maybe this is the sign of the wolf's bone
gnawed clean through: even cormorants,
those ravens of the sea, fall silent
during this shockingly brief spring,
and give way to suffocating debris,
each nation's flotsam quota sent away,
only to be returned by Triton's last gasps
of frothy retribution.
