The slope moves downhill to the water, planed and grooved
in the rules of flow, the slow ice grinding stone on stone
endlessly, cold after cold, until the land broke and moved
apart. The floor remains, formed as growth forms bone.
There is no such thing as time: it’s a concept we hold
to handle change. A floor is marked by hard water seeking
the way downwards. It is not ‘smoothed’ or ‘old’ –
things transform. The backs of writhing snakes making
free with rain found a river, danced in waves, the aeons
roiling, high and low water. They called. People came
to the serpents to mark the cyclic flow, chipping with stones
the periods of their passing: pattern on pattern, the same
nested in the same, flow in flow, and in the flow
soft skin apprehending; water, sunlight, reeds, ripple, now.