Birds converge and a swan idles sleepily past,
the large swath of the Delaware moving
in calming eddies with ancient premeditation
This voluptuous grey widow of a susurrus
has beat her way to the Atlantic for epochs
before Washington crossed her, and she will survive us
and our feeble attempts to harness her,
ceaselessly bearing her lissome body onward
enduring through seismic contraction, atmospheric abrasion
quietly going about her business of unquestioning existence
blithely free of existential qualms
coldly eroding our human footholds
She will collapse this bridge, eat that retaining wall,
drown humanity beneath her swift current

Yet even the Delaware, our measure of permanence
will someday go dry, all her boulders and banks
overrun by cosmic indifference, her entire glorious torrent
not even the bat of a celestial eye lash