Dorr's River

It cannot possibly exist. How could it? But I have felt that river, waking on frozen nights out on the ground at three in the morning.
-- Chris Clarke: The River of Gold

A delicate pattern of legs and wings
Ripples up between the light and the wall;
An outlined angel beats its wings, rises,
And dissolves again.
And now, at the join of the wall and the ceiling
The cranefly clicks against the woodwork
And stumbles against its inversion.

Today I held your face between my palms.

The enormous cool darkness
And the sound of running water
And the pull of the tide, running
Miles beneath the sand.
Dorr's River runs down to the sea.

You dip your hands in the sun
And a shadow falls on the world.