This poem only available on Stories Space. If you are reading it elsewhere, it has been stolen.

You see my writing on the wall
And you think you know who I am.

Am I splayed out naked for all to see,
Or can the breeze-blown reeds only glimpse
The surface where the chaff is
Drifting and floating onto the mill race,
Only to be lost in the tail past the grinding wheel,
Never use nor grace to any bread?

For there,
In the shallows where the rocks are exposed
And the deep thunders of mountains
Become giggling gurgles,
The roots of the reed beds rise,
And they do not know the undercurrents
They think they can feed on
Throughout the rains
When swollen channels are turgid and heavy
With ancient trees broken from higher lands
And glacial rocks rolling down carving valleys of history
As they drive their weight to scour
Ancestral gorges of mossy ink bleeding into abyssal depths
That cause walkers to wonder at the upper banks
In apathy or unentertained curiosity that they soon pass over
And by.

The reeds become dry from beneath in their exalted arrogance,
Swayed and surrounded by spreading, creeping woodlands and scrublands
Where truth lies lost in the source spring
Where the goddess now lies sleeping and forgotten
In her fern-hidden well that once bubbled with life.

And the writing on the wall fades
And rearranges
And changes
And disappears
And appears
And is not always what it seems
Or seemed
Or might whisper to prying, haughty eyes
That can only see their own reflection on the water-wet wall.

I will share what I wish,
And the riverbank plants may make of it what they wish.

You do not know my name.

This poem only available on Stories Space. If you are reading it elsewhere, it has been stolen.