Dreams of the Returning

When rivers meet oceans
Do they recount their source
What's held in wet memory
If sediment could talk
Raised in the mountains
Running to the hills
Wandering through valleys
Through topsoil distilled
But gravity's good solvent
A demise, a drift, downtime
While sullies of pastoralists
Disrupt alchemic rhyme
I was never good at geography
I'm soluble to the land
Tracing back through tributaries
A scrutiny on what I stand
Good water's three-way-wisdom
Sluiced of thoughtless woe
It keeps the flood from my front door
And my service to the flow

For green grows the laurel
If salt blue starts as dew
A beckoning great ocean
Keeps a water's course true
But dreams of the returning
Like the salmon's repair
Drives us to reclimb mountains
To settle home affairs

But I'm senseless in my wandering
A senescent porous mind
Karst cracked recollections
That turn sweet thoughts into brine
As I churn up misadventures
Meanders badly made
Downpours of pride
Well sprung, bone dried
In spates I disobeyed
So I sift on through the contours
Like molecules before
For the teaching of the river is
Nothing remains pure

When I hear the source's calling
That salmon's resolve
Draws me to land
Through mothers hands
Back up to where I've evolved

The higher grows the laurel
The longer is the view
We're unprepared when the path's declared
So to your source stay true
Oh green grows noble laurel
The ocean crowns you
Can dreams of the returning
Return me to you
Soft falls the dew
From blue to blue
Ever return you