Revisionist Poetry – “The River’s Undead Garden” – Rooted Flotsam, v.3

At the river’s lowered skin,
the bank lies exposed like a wound,
and the blackened roots reach out
as if to remember the body
that once fed them.

Branches claw from ruined trunks,
grafting themselves to rot,
to splinter, to silence,
as though decay were only
another name for hunger.

Along the mud,
seed and thorn and ruin
gather in shivering patches—
a fever of grasses,
a slow corruption of green
spilling around the dead timber.

The wind comes thin and cold,
dragging sand like ash,
dragging pollen like pale bone dust,
and the moss, and the fungi,
blooming in their secret dark
with the patience of tombs.

Everything here seems half-buried,
half-awake,
as if the river were not giving life
but hiding it,
as if what survives below the surface
has learned to feed
on death itself.