Flow Dynamics

So lightly and invisibly I hardly knew it,

river of blood descending without joy back to the heart

through the frail vein all the time

—the largest of the body!—

shredded then dissolved ("obliterated")

and there was a sudden seepage

into surrounding tissue

instead of the blood pouring out as you'd expect forever,

and a new vein formed to bypass what was gone

like a wild meander

even the smallest flood ends, and the river

goes straight from that point.

But in my case the thin-walled base-ends held

forming an anabranch, a section of a river

that diverts from the main channel,

rejoins it downstream.

Local ones can be caused by or make

small islands in the watercourse

but sometimes they flow hundreds of miles

like the Bahr el Zeraf in the south Sudan that splits from the

Bahr al Jabal of the White Nile, doesn't return

until Malakal

instead of leaving behind,

as it could have with the blood being old,

a full-fledged oxbow lake

that before too long

will blister in the sun, become

a little blue scar beside the heart.

Source: Life (Flood Editions, 2014)