Photo Art by Michael Dooley
Tributary
There's something sinuous, thrilling,
and deliberative about a river.
I come from a place without them.
There were marshes, dunes, fens,
and forests. There were plains,
and a sky no horizon contained.
Instead of rivers there was a dry creek
bed or two, seasonal or occasional,
the pool in the park, and drains,
wide channels carved out
by returned soldiers whose
battle-scarred hands remade
ancient wetlands. I longed for
a river.
I wanted a riotous cacophony of power,
a storm without a cloud.
I wanted a spot above a steep bank
to contemplate the flow.
I wanted (I still want), sharp rapids,
the fall, a wide expanse, the quiet pull,
something unsweetened by sugar,
a downstream rush, a cold shock,
the meander, the deep, the quickening
of the blood by the unseen source of it all,
and those dark, endless undercurrents.
A river.
