stage V - crossing the river

after months in the desert
where your heart turned into a
leathery mummy,
the river lies before you now.

and in you go, headlong
into the dizzying rapids,
you grow new arms and fins
while cortex learns and
reptile brain craves
one pulling forward to the unseen land across
and the other down to stranger pleasures,
the wetness of willing lips

whether I make it or not,
tomorrow is beginning to look
like a good place to be again