So We Both Love Rivers - 02/19/11

Here,
in the dying light of a year long Saturday,
the sky already so dark that I,
a writer so practiced,
can barely make out my pencil’s tip,
do write on the back of a map that was supposed
to lead me to victory so sweet,
how I ended up by the river,
a year passed and no change:
it flows.
The river gathers and flows.
So everly it flows even as darkness
of sky and soul
cloud my vision.
It flows.

The trees arch over it
as they did last year,
as the will next year,
one dead and I remember.

Remember the way back
perfectly, not one wrong turn,
even though I doubted,
but here I am,
flowing.

The river does not whisper to me
the way it did the Brahmin prince,
does not tell me its secrets.
Have I not lost enough?
Have I not completed an experience ascetic enough
to beg pity from this river,
flowing?
So, alone, I sit,
where I once stood,
holding a love,
touching lips for the first time,
learning, passing on.

Back to the setting sun,
I sit.
The river flows.

And I love so I will
flow back
to where I came from
but wander slowly shall my feet
with my heart’s slow beat
of mourn.
And as I wander, I do wonder
what has happened by the river?
I fell beside it,
empty and heavy,
dreading to move,
feeling so little,
but as I wandered back and wondered,
there was the river,
filling my heart,
filling it, but making it light.

So full and so light.