So lightly and invisibly I hardly knew it,
 
river of blood descending without joy back to the heart
through the frail vein all that time
 
—the largest of the body—
 
shredded then dissolved (“obliterated”)
and there was a
 
sudden seepage into the surrounding tissue
 
instead of the blood pouring out as you’d expect forever
before a new vein formed
 
to bypass what was gone like a wide meander
 
even the smallest flood ends, and the river
goes straight from that point.
 
But in my case the thin-walled base-ends held
 
forming an anabranch,
a section that diverts from the main channel,
 
rejoins it downstream.
 
Local ones can come from, make small islands in the watercourse
or flow hundreds of miles
 
like the Bahr el Zeref in the south Sudan
 
that splits from the Bahr al Jabal of the White Nile,
doesn’t return until Malakal
 
instead of leaving behind, as it could have
 
with the blood being old,
a full-fledged oxbow lake, a little blue
 
scar beside the heart.