The River
The River
A silent river creeping down
Out of a wide and silent land;
Shelving banks and bluffs that frown,
Half-clay – half hid by wire-grass brown
And reaches of level bottom land
Where thickets of plum and willow stand
With a ragged grove for a border line,
Where, hid in tangles of weed and vine,
The blackened bones and charred stumps show
How the breath of the fire-scourge used to blow
When he leaped the river long ago.
A shallow river – it thinly creeps
In drouth, through yellow sand-bars dry,
When August passes without a cloud;
A yellow current, it swirls and sweeps
In flood, and piles the weed-drift high
When the blare of the rushing storm is loud,
When the black cloud rent with jagged gleans
Stoops to the hills and deep ravines.
Edwin Piper
The Kiote, May 1901