It's Still Life

Songs the River Sings (A Sonnet to River Arun)

The boat was small, the river calm—
no storm to blame, no wrathful psalm.
Just wood grown tired of being wood,
just water doing what water should.

Eleven men (their hands dark
with earth-turned songs), eight women
(keepers of loom and flaxen thread),
now seamstresses of this riverbed.

May mountains spill its fire down
on the icy flow of Arun’s crown.
But hush—the tide won’t speak a name,
just whispers what the current claims.

We ask you please, o’ heartless judge—
why stitch the young to water’s grudge.