City of Two Rivers

The pasty moon wrapped in gossamer swirl

Hangs yellow above this city of two rivers

Like a jaundiced face lost in obscurity:

The dull gray lick of river-shadows

Paint-ridged stick silhouettes

On the chaste landscape, black and white

These serpentine rivers of mud

Crawl along the valley floor

Turbid with suicidal venom

Condemned with aboriginal death cries

Washed from the Earth like salmon

Migrating to the sea, never to return

How many nameless and hungry

Prowl these muddy shores

Lost and forgotten

Their cadavers bloated afloat

To be discovered at the confluence

Of this city of two rivers