by Minnie Collins
Across streams, inlets, lakes and rivers,
Dancing, leaping against the tidal upstream
Navigating the signs, currents, and ways of knowing,
Mapping and threading ancestral stories, unheard, unnoticed or ignored, of lives captured in red, blue, green,  gold and onyx gem stones
Now white washed, beached, sun bleached, adrift, aground
Soon smashed and graded by fields of asphalt spit

Aquatic Spirits jostle currents of ebb and flow seeking balance
While like a Janus spirit delve into the future and the past
Pondering DOT zones, housing codes, taxes, and waste water
Aquatic Spirits crack, quake, quaver ,amid squalls yet never quit
Restrain us if you think you can; Our spirts run with  subterranean tides on deeper fathoms.