Flowing Down the Stream to the Tune of the Downstream Song

By Hunter Potts

Often coffins flowing

down the stream share

a single bone between the lot of them.

Of silky skin

and s t r e t c h e d arteries

where a single crow sits

atop, the scent emanates

about the downstream song.

Sopranos and baritenors —

the favorite cheap entertainment of the wolves —

dance with soft piccolos.

They dance the downstream song.

Secrets are kept from

the bottoms

of the coffins,

the parts that rot

away.

But that’s only sometimes.

That’s only when the crows

eat the flesh of sulking men

too endowed in their watery problems

to realize

That’s only when trashed instruments belt

out the blues of the downstream song

because they’re too poetic

to realize

That’s only when there’s a lack

of bones in the graveyard

while wolves howl away, thirsting,

realizing

That’s only when synthetic floods

push those already

dead down the stream.

 

That’s only always.