Density

The river creates

and carves out

the heart

of the city.

In 1900, after seventy-

seven years of sludge

and shit and sewage

had spilled,

the stream was turned

and for the first time

the silt began

flowing south.

However, in

the deepest bowels

of winter

the churning bottom currents

crawl blindly back along

the riverbed

remembering their ancestral

route, making their migration

against the machinations of man;

home.