To cause you any undeserved alarm
But just to catch and simplify a thought:
The river has stretched out its mighty arm
And taken back its own. The lowland plain
On either side belongs, not to mankind
(Though we may occupy it in the main)
But to the river. Where we have designed
Our dams and levees, we merely delay
Not stem its great resumption of itself.
The time will come, though not perhaps today,
When it will rehydrate the bottom shelf
And leave the Rock alone to peek its head
Above the Mississippi's watershed.
