Ralph Monday writes in Harriman TN.

This Is the Stream
By Ralph Monday

The Rubicon does not make us bleed.
Neither do all the rivers that run through us,
not the Nile, the Red Sea, the Euphrates,
Tigris. The bloodstream is a river, all
tributaries branching to the sea.
We bleed for our loss, for all the losses that
run like cresting waves before cities, before
emergence from caves like a child sliding
wet and red from the womb.
We bleed for brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers,
turn an ear to all the drops dripping through
time. Our arteries gush for the unborn, the dead.
Our bleeding is interpreted by insects, discussed
among deserts, painted by songs.
Crimson droplets stream from fingertips.
We listen to all the bleeding cascading down
like Niagara.
Nothing can stem the flow.