Clearing time

That fever really lingered

Lighting up my head
so that my belly
and all the way down into my thighs
exhausted its heat
in simmering radiation

It held on strong
but it crested
and it broke

An ache that sat in my head
and kept me thinking for days
with its madman's metabolism
drew itself back
and left me feeling cold and dumb

Sometimes it's good
to just lie down on the rocks
and let the river flood
scraping the land away
to shake off an old course
carving through the flesh a new one

I listen because I've learned it talks
teeming and turbid
telling me useful things
in a way that my well-dammed river won't

After its babbling lecture
and its sound beating
I wake
dizzy with a bad taste in my mouth
ligaments dusty and desperate for stretching
but my flesh cool again
impossible to defeat
in it's stumbly weakness

Then its finally time to crack the blinds
'cause the light outside pours in warm
into that space the heat's confusion left
vacant and neatly scoured

Not a bit of strength left in me
but cheerful and empty

Ready to face whatever old troubles
might have survived as well
through my newly etched ways
carved around the old damage
in cascades and gullies

At least the flood left me all running clear
for awhile
until the silt dams me up again
and the waters work up a new fever all over