River of Eden

 I was running up the river bed dry

She was naked laying in her bed

Her stones had not bled, and she could not cry

Her dress of water was locked in store

And she was cold lying on the stone floor

I ran up the Biddle combe brook

And it gave to me a sideways look

Who are you to trample on my bones?

Can't you see I lie alone

I need no other to claim my throne

Or cast about my care-worn stone

I am nature the mother grown

But no other shall me own

I looked about and saw 

The folly of the broken door

And just as if the river was smarter

I started to hear the sound of laughter

And in ripples and in childish tides

Her water dress trickled down over her thighs

And filled the dry bed where once she was wed

With its web-locked fingers, and its fluidity spread

And curled in crispness of a fresh salad bed

That springs up after the first rains 

And I like a leaping monkey had to jump out her way

Or her water dress would have swallowed me up

In her water cress-caress I was a fungi

Soft as a velvet Jews ear

And I could listen to her glistening and glamorous stories

Of the time she joined the Gulf stream

To travel for a day and a year

But she returned in the rain clouds

Heavy and all out of sorts

He had left her near the Isle of Iona of course

For a Madagascan or Chillian sport

So she returned to her hilly spring 

She dressed herself in black,

And she lay in ground waters low in the basin

Of the Mendip hills limestone cavernous crack

She stayed like a widow in mourning 

she lay in a suicide pact

With the staligtites and staligmites adorning

Her chamber of echoing fact

She called to her own deep reflection

And she spoke with the mirror of the cave

And it said you're the source so remember

It is only from you we can make waves

So go out into the world once again

When the cold air will not turn you to ice

And be the river of Eden

That runs out through paradise