Luck, Lies, and Faith

The work one soul does
Stuck in the world mind
But loosed from teamed walls,

Does not look like much,
Does not look much like
The dammed worlds teams build.

It’s small-bore, this world
Drained through one short swirl
In the stream of days—

You’d have to love knots
And flow rates and small
Notched steps in cliff falls

To spend time on these
Curls churned by one rock
Half like a cracked skull.

The big words for this
Skill with a split force
Mat it in dead leaves.

The streams pulls them down
Once they’ve choked it, backed
It up a bit. How

The rock came to fall
In this spot, to block
The stream just this way,

Swirl these knots, these waves,
That’s hard to say. Faith,
Lies, and luck. Droughts, floods,

And ice. The skull stuck
Just so. The stream churned
Its scales. A gyre rose.