That time by the river

It was summer, early, or perhaps spring late; all time, and no time, hours or an eternity, time like torrents of snowmelt, roaring and whispering, both. The water carrying starlight down from the high peaks; time slow, like blossoms opening in their time, wild rose, daisy, lupin, paintbrush.

Our human time was not carnal, was incarnate, our intimacy like the spotted sandpipers’ tender probing among shining rocks at the river’s edge for nymphs and larvae, sustenance plucked from cold clear joy.

Our kindnesses showed a higher love as the blue heron paused on a dead branch of a snowing cottonwood tree, as our bodies rested on the bank below, as cedar waxwings danced from snag to sky, caught sparkling insects in the silent air’s sunlight above the singing rush of water that spilled toward its calmer home.

And a fritillary alit, sunlit, alight and spinning its dance on the yellow heart of a daisy for us… or not for us, just there: red, gold, orange, and silver afire, as wings opened and closed, not in sorrow, nor joy, not in acceptance or forgiveness or surrender or anything that calls for earthly tears, just there before us, below the peaks so high above, above the river sparkling past, day into night, as wind stirred the trees above it, lifted our eyes beyond our eyes to the currents that move the stars.

Chimney leaning against the orange sky

Prom dress smudged across the concrete floor Fire-eaten shell of crib, the hollow ash of home These are songs bequeathed to the survivors

Untouched, I am given a different grief

The trees gone along the creek, the maples and the ash Cottonwoods, their leaves strewn black hearts Shuffled, reshuffled in the slow soot-dark eddies

This way was mine, these many years

From edge of my town to edge of next Place for warblers between the roads Last reach for salmon beyond the sea

This little forest will return, with care I will help in the replanting, but I know I am too old to stand in its shade again My walk, now, will be through the past

Sandra Wassilie