On Rivers

There is something about a river that says, you may put up road blocks, you may damn me and endeavor to control me. You will try to lead me along your paths in your ways but every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I flow with unintended consequences, and you can make poetry or tragedy of these.

The river sings, I burst and bulge and flood. I have a memory, I go my own ways. You mimic me with your interstate corridors and back street alleys. Like the streets that connect your neighborhoods and the blood that journeys through your veins, the constellation of arteries. I am path and pulse. I am power. I am a passage of nourishment and I will get to the places I am going. I will arrive at the destinations I intend to be.

For all its demanding the river is my friend. The Umpqua, the Santiam, and even the Columbia. They remind me that coursing forces can enact destruction. Or hope.

My friend who courses and remembers. She kisses my fingertips that I have left laying gently by the rock. She holds me under in her deep embrace and I hear what she hears. The multitudinous conversations of the world around us. Birds crying to each other, the wind whistling, and distant instances of the city wafting back to us, all synthesized into a muted chorus. The Irish monks who made their homes on small juttings of rock know the sound. They have learned the art and rhythm of chanting, focusing their will as she does into reverence, worship into one stream of quiet connection.