The River

I thought of this poem today as I walked down behind RK's to the slow bend in the river, just before a big riffle with a bit of a drop through huge boulders. There were several salmon holed up behind a white rock in the center of the river. Two brown ducks came by followed by one white one, but all else was still. The fish moved their tails gently, changing places with each other, lying quiet, the white sores where their scales have been battered off, marking their location and their movement. They stayed behind the rock. When their forward motion brought them to the front, they stopped and drifted back. I watched and rested for a while above the river while Samson ran bounding around sniffing, but they remained oblivious.

Then I went down to the beach and walked along the edge. I love to walk on the boulders, getting that edge of rock into the tender place that feels so good in my arch. They seemed like giant colored eggs, treasures decorated in veined and cracked patterns and the gold, maroon and brown leaves from the grapevines still shone wetly on the ground where they had fallen like a thick carpet and the magic mirrored pool of water lay still, caught in depression of a giant rock and the river was smooth, deepgreenbrown, opaque. The bunch grass glowed like the orange autumn sun, while the sun itself slipped behind the silver edge of grey clouds coming in from the northwest, and everything around me, alive. I sat for a while, ate the fruit, took the ibuprophen I need now for walks, drank the water and looked at the cloudy patterns in the sky. The wind came up cool, giving me a chill and getting me to my feet.

I thought a lot about "following my bliss" a term I dislike but understand. I had been wondering if I had done that in my life, worrying that I hadn't, such a typical, habitual mo, when the realization came that indeed this was my bliss and I had lived it here on the river, bringing the experience back with words which were recognized to be interesting only by a few, ignored and certainly unsellable to anyone else. My life has conformed to the heros journey unbeknown to me and for which I can take no credit. The journey was filled with such doubt, misgiving, and anxiety as well as the longing for something other than what was.

I have felt in recent times, at an end. The fire marked that boundary, and I have felt at a loss as to where to go or what to do next. I feel I have written all the stories that I have in me. This journal is endless until I die.



A Moment to Consider

Consider the moment
as you approach water,
just before you see it .

Feel the sense of excitement rising,
leaning over to look through trees
or peeping over the dunes
or past the rocks
to catch the first glimpse of
that strange shape shifter
that is the source of our being.

See how it drapes itself over the curves of rocks
See how it softens stone into sand.
see how its fingers dance in the sunlight
and how it laughs against stone,
and look how it falls,
careless
or how it pours itself along,
flat,
swirling
refecting heaven.

See it heave itself upon the shore over and over

See how your very essence flows
when free of cell walls,
loosened into its own nature

See

it falling

falling

for hours

for days

in thousands

and billions

of separate drops

a gift the sky gives the earth
to make life possible.

See how it gathers itself
and flows flat and humble,
carving by the force
of its surrender
to its own nature,
a channel to the sea.

See how your heart beats faster
as you approach the flow.

See how you rush forward
as if to a celebration,
an ancient gathering of tribes,
drums pounding,
worshipers dancing,

from here comes all personality,
all character

and all life,

and here,
on the shore,

we meet again.