The Rimac Rio (a poem)

I sometimes wonder, if you are for real (My River); I see you are worried and frightened. I am sure, neither one of us have anything to fear but the element of time: some call this death, death, death!…

Yet you river, coy as you may seem, go on, and on, and on (strangely): seemingly, without change….

I’ve noticed you’ve been suspicious of many things, especially me—. In this respect, I have been watching thy.

I have been viewing the world, and everyone’s havoc and fainted smiles, on everyone’s lips….

“Well,” I said, “they have over looked me; but I am nothing anybody would wish.” This little game they and I, I and you play… play, is almost laughable, as we both hide from the truth, or at least dare not acknowledge it.

I suppose, —I suppose, I am glad I have nothing of value other than my life. And have you for my tranquility; yet, I have learned: no matter how often a man’s soul is tranquil, Calm. serene: a culprit will be hiding in the valley thus, make no mistake…; pride comes before destruction yet still, none will bow their knees… it is the beast within thee… !

I feel like a stranger in a world of strange beings, all of us thrown together in some kind of fading mystery.

The moment occupies but an once of time…we, we, we are… are all preoccupied, obsessed with time… time, time, a rivers rhyme; I see even the river bleeds helplessly, that is perhaps, a weakness it does not wish for me to see.

The river just gave me one of its

most terrible looks—; it summons me, as if I was on its hook.

“Undress and come in,” it says; then, “shut up, get dressed!”

It is confused like so many of us; it is fabricating something.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” I say to the river.

“Treason,” it replies: barks back at me.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,”

I say, almost plead.

But the river does not bend, kneel for anybody.

I leap to my feet and the waves of the river grab me… seize me: several hands around me….

“Take him underneath the water, drawn him,” I hear the Rimac say, then comes the words: “a spy, spy, spy..!” but I think: I have nothing, nothing But my life!…

I figured, this was the end to it all: Time…as I know it to be (and it soon will be). But I have learned you must trust somebody, it’s simply healthy; for the river, well, it will find somebody more suitable than I, I suppose; and in time, it will also die: why? The river can no longer tell the wolf from the sheep; it only sees mans greed.

Note: #923 11/12/2005 (written while in Lima, Peru; after visiting the Rimac River.)