Blue Danube
Poetry by Melanie Challenger

Rain formed onto pearl-like drops of grain, through a filigree of grass, and the bluish-grey oyster-husk of tarmac, onto a riddle of small, smooth stones, worn

by the actions of water, seepage through the tittle-tattling surface stones, down to the cloggy dross of shells and clay and river sediment, winnowing past a network of limestone stalactites, separating out into its simpler elements, removing its impurities like the seeking hands of a pearl-diver, on the water goes, through the excreta of cadavers, quietly broken down by living organisms, congesting, seeping through the soil out into deltas, into

river mouths, into the blue beak of a waiting gosling.