The river

Water flows like time
Fast and rocky
Smooth and quiet
Trickle and bubble
I bend in the stream
Like a good Confucian in confusion
Frightened of fighting the flow
Tao
Drift with the sand/silt
A pebble worn bald
Watch the seasons grow
The rain falls and adds to the stream
The pain goes and sinks below
Falling, settling, rolling
Picked up and smoothed
Broken, cracked
Journeying to the sea

The beach of the river is grey and black
Cut through the landscape
The banks of the water meadow
Time flows like sand on the streambed
Screams past like cars on the bridge
I see the water from the road
The rain slicks the tarmac and heads for the drain
Away to mix with the human waste
To rejoin upstream
I see the rushes
My life as a film
And I am just an extra
I see the rushes
Bending in the flow
Papyrus elsewhere
I see the rushes
White rabbit lifestyle
Late late caffeine cigarettes speed and ecstasy
Faster cars and neon nights dance dance manic rabbit heartbeat life

The river flows under the bridge
The sand moves and settles
Pebbles roll and eternity passes
The bridge stands at right angles
This is progress
This is the way

A film is made of 24 frames per second
It flows together to make a gestalt
Watch time-lapse of the water rise and fall
Watch time-lapse of the cars blur into lines of plastic/steel
Watch time-lapse of the stars make concentric circles
Meditate on a corpse

Dust on the road washed into the gutter
Dust in the river flowing to the stars
When the sun turns red and eats the sky
Dust blasted into planetary nebula
Dust drifting into interstellar space
Dust alone in the cold and the dark
Flakes of my skin
Joining the river of dust heading towards M87

Two hydrogen and one oxygen
Lubricating my eye
Sodium united with chlorine
Purified in the fusion of supernova meltdown explosion
Sea water gift of the stars
I am dust
I write
I live
A frame
A pixel
A grain of wit
A pearl of life in the cold river of time
I am carbon
I am iron
I am water