(Androscoggin River, Bethel, Maine, August 2002)
Down the rips between rocks and boulders,
through low notches of glacier made brook-banks,
along the ballast of old slides
where purple lupine and blue asters
twist through roots and the tentacular embrace
of shortened summers,
where freeze-thawed fissures
hold lichen and spores of
still-unidentified fern-like fronds,
it flows.
Rivers can only descend,
fleeing from mountains,
twisting lower and lower,
coiling or uncoiling liquid downward,
cadenced by rhythm of swirls and pools,
by muted morning music of fog vapors,
lifting heat from cool oxbows,
transcending the pylons and pillars of a gorge that
has an origin no human has ever seen.
It is as beautiful as mercury,
as adamant as the force of its consistency,
as powerful as its chisel-like existence,
cutting,
it lives,
and breathes its own moisture to the ocean,
water reaching water.
