Kathleen Griffin - Tiber

Grey-green industrial cleaner
miscalled the Tiber
washes around the frozen ship
of Aesculapius
where the snakes went ashore.

But the grassy margin survives,
and in its withered sedge
complacent ducks nest,
paddle across the polluted water,
and bottom-up feeding.

Kathleen Griffin

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tiber/