My life as a virtue

You thought me dry and dead,

Barely a spoonful worth of a river.

.

Behold! I flow once more,

Surprising the refugee,

My white heron.

.

Allowing am I,

The miracle of fresh frog egg,

The white rush of feathered fish.

.

Never have I been mightier,

More replete with rain than the

Floods of millennia past,

When humanity had just

Summoned enough curiosity

To die from old age.

.

This too, the padding of fresh

Duckling feet on my surface,

Shall pass.

.

With patience, and the willingness of

Oak leaf to kiss the loam and moss,

I shall bear children and pass from this world.

.

Never, bittersweetly, to return.