Rivers Rising
Sunday, December 14, 2008
I was talking with a friend (well, not talking, but almost) about his river. He reminded me of mine, that seductress who rises from and through time on the first page of her autobiography, Flow.
From within the fissure I rise, old as anything.
The gravel beneath me slides. Blueback herring and eel, alewife and shad muscle in to my wide blue heart, and through. The smudged face of a wolf pools on my surface, and for that one instant, I go blind.
Hemlock to either side. Nut trees. Laurel copses. The stony backs of snapping turtles on the shore, muskrat, shrew, and from the unlanterned forest, the bark of a fox, the skith skith skith of snakes over leaves, the prowl of a bobcat, and when it rains the rain is its own kind of song, not just a drumming, but a lyric.
Were there language, I’d be my own lone letter.
7 comments:
That's beautiful
Makes me want to go sit by a river for a few hours and just watch and listen. :)
Why don't the three of us go off and sit by the banks of a river, then?
It's a river running morning. I'd just melted into this before reading your post:
"I was born upon thy bank, river,
My blood flows in thy stream,
And thou meanderest forever
At the bottom of my dream."
Henry David Thoreau
Beautiful, Sherry. I'd never seen that before.
I would love to go and do just that but i think I'll wait until spring, at least. I don't particularly like winter and the cold that comes with it :-)
Oh, I love the voice of the river. Strong. Rhythmic. Stunning.
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