Poetry and Writes

River (WRITE)

*An untimed write I did as I sat beside Oregon's Metolius River. Not supposed to be metaphoric, or about anything but the awe of nature and greater things.*

This is so full, so real, so multihued, such a reeling gushing crashing breathing force of life. It's times like these when I'm stopped by a hitch at my clavicle, by a thump in my heart, by the grandness of things as this, when I can understand why people worship God.

I itch to remove my socks and tennis shoes, wade into the Metolius, lapping at my neck, pulling at my chin, kneading at my hair, and whoosh. I'm under, I'm a salmon, I can see! I can see--though my vision's only grays and greens and an occasional muted blue. The sheer powerful bliss of the river, this force tugging me along with its own wills--white foam, swarming dancing gnats, darting dragonflies, creepers zipping from tree to tree, across the murmuring water--I am swept away with my salmon-eyes, with my transformed legs and graceful scales, swept away until the hook flicks me up, and I am back, I am sitting on a dusty dead log, my feet dead dusty logs themselves, my wrist churning as the river once churned me, just once in the godless moment I truly let myself go, truly felt what the fish would feel, how the river's magnets sunk me down among the singing sifting pebbles, the clicking climbing crayfish, and now I see a spider dash away from the moving shadow of my still-churning wrist, blending fantasies that come clear with lines once the dust, once the chalk, blows away in a graceless wind.

A flower bends in the breeze of myself.