River

Days of the doldrums, adverse days: body,
a decompression chamber; my flesh, lead-mined.
Out to salvage summer on a cold shore
I watch plate armour turn to a quilt of
fiery leaves, amber and cinnabar.
The sun slides behind the trees. Graphite
traceries cast their nets, bundle that spill
of iridescent blood into the deep —
the serpent-river slipping another life,
cusped by night winds as it waits, moon-skinned,
for dawn's ghostly scrim: a bird-torn mist,
mauve silk then a flow etched with lifelines —
arabesques that ravel and unravel
pathways, map unforeseeable ends.