Lazily sometimes,

Murmuring, trickling as I go,

and fierce at others –

a deluge of unprecedented force

that envelops trees and

tears them down in a surging

torrent of muddy water filled 

with broken rocks and blood

and the caracases of animals that ran,

fueled by fear till their lives were spent

and they collapsed, breathless before me,

kneeling, panting, watching, waiting for death, 

pleading, dying, breaking apart, becoming the surge, 

the wave, the flood –

that will go on bubbling slowly 

down toward that peaceful ocean

where all streams rage on the shores of the living.