Euphrates/Tigris

The blue-faced monster creeps behind a screen
of reeds, a lily mask. It's hungry for
the history of all the lands between
its arms. The ruins of cities wrecked by war.
It takes them all, the ghosts of ancient states
and children claimed by bombings yesterday,
dissolved in sediment. The choking weight
of narrow waters filled with human clay.

It drinks both blood and sand on which it's spilt,
a cocktail of destruction, salted with
resurgent national ambitions, myths
of long-gone glory faded into silt.
In desert lands, though monuments remain
unweathered, rivers swallow up the plain.

--for Read Write Poem's NaPoWriMo prompt #26: fragments
I acquired the fragments from which this poem grew at the OSPA conference last weekend. You can read the first poem that grew from them here.
Collection available! Knocking from Inside