Gold

Rush to the head
narrow veins
from the source
arsenic reaching its mouth
sluicing headwaters
The landscape
of the living mind, 
mined,
river bed
An oxbow lake draining
becomes
the swamp
deposits,
panning, scooping,
run off
clogged with sediment
Inside each of us
cutting tunnels and
Damming, the sinking
Of treacherous shafts
Minerals,
The prospect……. Chinese headstones
and children’s cemetery
lie high above the dry gully
where once
a spiritual tributary
flowed,
today  scarred and furroughed,
shallow,
meandering
between ruin
and decay

August 2017