Old man drowsing in the reddish motion
Of your uncoiling chestnut river, Ruin,

What will you dream of next, now
That your own dreams know themselves

That they’ve in whole or large part been
Long since stolen? Ladybug larvae

Are everywhere, on the sunny back porch
And up against the sunny wall.

Male goldfinches sing in suburban gardens,
Trilling, and the shade trees leaf out,

The nut trees all in blossom. A plague,
Of sorts, whispers around these houses,

Whisper that’s writing this spring’s history
Into the history books, oh yes, as if books

And histories were not more fragile
Than the species of plagues and insects

And nuts and songbirds and shade trees
That humans and histories threaten. Never

You mind, old man dozing in golden sun,
Plump with knowing in your scrawny bones

You will not live to see all this all ruined.
Rivers, you find yourself half dreaming,

Are not such good figures for time after all,
Never you mind, Kongzi and Heraclitus,

Buddha and all the rest. Downstream now,
The lot of you. Rivers are not as rhythmic

As clocks, not as cyclical as seasons,
Moons, or spring days just past equinox.

They’re too linear and too destructive,
And even when measured by nilometers

Are just erratic enough to remind us
The future is not some property just for us

To measure. Rivers stay dangerous, snaky,
And ruinous. So the sage steps into one

But never twice, mysterious. Old man,
Dozing in your quilt of stolen phrases,

Do you know where rivers really start?
In iron. Earth’s hard heart that generates

Auroras between the clouds sailing up
To dissipate as crystals called out and lost

To the sun—Earth’s secret heart of iron
Shields this atmosphere. The clouds

Fall back to ground, down, down, down.
The weaker Earth has won against the sun.

So the rivers swell and run. Life depends
On iron reining water in, on erosion

Into oceans, on minerals, on ruin. Enough
With that one word, silly old man smiling

In your sleep in your borrowed backyard
Near a black-walled gorge of lava scored

Down to sandstone where the Virgin River
Runs, ladybugs on your arm in spring sun.