Hindostan Falls

Thick beads of water cling chill
to skin, slide into cloth to trickle,
dauntless, down the inverted hill
of the small of our backs. As a child
I believed that all rivers were blue--
you, though, are dark, a mix of mud,
foam, and compost rot that a few
find beautiful.  You are swollen with fall
rain and stories of disease, death, decay.



Your cascading mists falsify my father
and my friend who stand but feet away.
A decrepit yellow sign proudly enumerates
your massacre of those villagers who trusted
you to give them life water and raise them
to old age.  Through all those rusted words
I read how, instead, your incessant waters
bred mosquitoes that spread yellow fever
that killed a town.  Those victims



did not see you as I do -- they never
saw destructive maelstroms in your
lazy whirlpools, never saw saliva-dripping,
jagged teeth hungering for death
in your waterfall, nipping
at the shores of silt and pulling
all who look upon you down.
But I watch your sanguine trees
dropping their corpse-blood colored leaves.