If all my roads turn to rivers.

Who can tame my waters once they decide to rise? Not I.

Not whilst they mar my coffer with ferocious, ferric fists,

thrashing at my ticker’s tides,

braiding, my vessels knots and twists.

How can I defy the crow who flies into the bowels? I try.

Cawing for my soles to root me to my steps and rungs,

a vexing, fruitless feat, when my trunks no longer speak,

my quaking body’s mother tongue.

How, if my roads were to turn to rivers, would I

wield and brace the workings of their tides?

When, blindly, in puddles of no consequence,

I have drowned a thousand lives.