Spring Flood by Colin Morton

Spring flood pushes mud up the riverbank
and over, where last week I watched you
jogging, your bare limbs
white in the cold
now brown water flows,
no longer the familiar calm friend,

the river leaps canyons of itself, threatens
the footbridge, tears out
new promontories in the sandy shore,
tears them away,
trees totter on the edge like
divers having second thoughts,
tender leaves trailing
green hair in the water.

I am thinking of you, can't help it,
it's that poem I started last week,
the one that went, Your river
runs through me to an unfamiliar sea,
it won't be written now, can't be,
was going nowhere anyway,
its fragile lines trail
green grasses in your flood,
which in time will recede,
return to its familiar bed,

leaving me
with altered edges, old
roots exposed,
new growth stunted or delayed,
and forever leaning like these trees

toward you.