That shallow fast-running
creek. White
rapids. The mud-colored
water breaking
in anger brittle as
bone.
You can’t see where
it comes from
or where it is going
in such anger
and how
could you stop
once you’ve fallen
and are being
carried away by the current
choking, tumbling rock-
bruised
and helpless
drowning for miles
downstream
where no one will know
your name,
or face.
Like the girl
who’d drowned they said
up in Innisfail
or was it she’d been
beaten and thrown
into the creek so the story
was Death but more
than Death and no one
would tell you.
Not even her name.
Though many times
you saw her in the crazed
rapids white
arms flailing like
your own,
hair drenched down
her back, Oh many
times where the creek
was fiercest where
light broke on the water
like a knife
entering the eye. That
shallow lost
creek, those useless kicking
white legs
and no name you could
ever learn.