GANGA

I was made of water and skies
and clothed in the tears
of a thousand moons.

I was fed the laughter of rivers
and housed in the fears
of a thousand homes.

I was born, but I never died.

I walked with the shadows
and within them too.

I rose from songs and fled into them.

Generations after I spoke of myself,
you speak of me as if you were me.

I, a dead shell of negligence, grow
and still grow on my own wild banks.

Messy, mossy lives – marred mud baths
in the sacred months and moons of light

and more of that there from where it all came.

I am the land, the living in it and the life.
They who live in me shall never die.