Today
more fen
than stream,
I draw
my source
from depths
unseen.
No need
to move,
how still,
how clear
am
I.
Posts Tagged ‘river’
After Years of Rushing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clarity, fen, river, stillness on August 9, 2026| 2 Comments »
The Clearing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clearing, river, slowness on July 20, 2026| 6 Comments »
Already the river is lighter in color,
less brown, less turbid, more
translucent. Just yesterday
the currents were thick with mud
and logs, needles and sticks
and bits of once-living debris.
Now that the furious flood has lost
its force, the gravel and sand
have begun their settling.
Whatever was floating now rests
on the banks and all that is left
suspended in the water
is what is most fine.
Soon, even that will sink
and the water will be clear again.
I, too, have felt the gift of slowing,
how it invites a sedimentation
of all I try to carry—the silt of my stories,
the muck of the world.
Like a river, the more calm I am,
the more clear I can become.
No magic, just a matter of physics.
How natural it is, the clearing.
The Phone Call
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, conversation, friendship, phone call, refuge, respite, rest, river on March 25, 2026| 4 Comments »
While all around us the world rushes by,
our conversation becomes a wide flat rock
in the midst of the river where we can rest
long enough to see not everything
is snarl and torrent, rapid and rush.
See how the heron lands in the eddy,
how soft moss grows on rocks in the shade.
Holding up all the tumult, the peaceful.
At the edges of chaos, the beautiful.
This is why, when I call you in the middle
of the day and you answer, I almost cry.
Because the timbre of your voice is enough
to land me. I lie on the solid rock of our talk.
I rest there long enough for my own pulse
to slow, long enough dangle my ankle
into the current and think, yes,
I can swim again.
What Joins Us
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, question, river, stafford, uncertainty on February 3, 2026| 2 Comments »
At last the river is covered in ice,
a vast white sheet from bank
to bank. A woman, or a rabbit,
could use to cross what usually
feels uncrossable. I think
of William Stafford standing beside
the frozen Methow river, asking a question.
The silent river was his answer.
Later today I will put on my old navy coat
and my big old rubber boots and walk
to the shore with my satchel of questions,
the ones that writhe and twist in me,
the ones that make me tremble.
Perhaps, you, too, will bring your questions
to a shore where winter has hidden the song.
If you have no river, any quiet space will do.
We can stand there together
at the edge of no separation
to see which questions spill out.
No matter where we stand,
we can listen to the silence
that crosses all boundaries, listen,
together, and wade into the current
beneath all listening.
Currents
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, flood, love, river on January 31, 2026| Leave a Comment »
I walk to the river and see how the banks
have changed since even two days ago.
Now water flows through the bright red willows
instead of staying in the main channel.
I remember how it used to run right here
where I am standing until a mighty flash
flood altered its course and there was not
a damn thing anyone could have done to stop it.
There is, even now, a rising flood of love.
It will move anything that tries to impede it.
When I can’t hear the flood of love,
that’s when I know it is up to me to share love
so someone else hears the currents I’m listening for.
Together we make unstoppable waves—how they roar.
After a Morning of Crossing Things from a List
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death anniversary, grief, love, missing, river, silence, talking to the dead on August 13, 2025| 12 Comments »
Then comes the moment
when not one thing is more important
than walking to the river
and finding a wide rock in the middle
of the flow where I can sit
and speak to you.
There’s not much to say
these days besides I love you,
I miss you. So I say the paltry words,
six inadequate syllables.
As always they are sorry translations
for the infinite songs of my heart.
So I sit on the rock and listen;
silence the language you speak now.
I’ve been learning its tender
conjugations—you were. You are.
You have been. You will have been.
Is it true they all sound the same?
I practice silence long enough
the river moves through me
touching all I cannot say.
I don’t know how I know
when it is time to rise.
The silence holds me.
I teach the silence your name.
One Role Model
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged letting go, river on May 15, 2025| 4 Comments »
leaf sinks to the bottom—
even the river too tired
to hold up everything
Out of the Corner of My Eye
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, grief, mother, presence, river, son on May 8, 2025| 10 Comments »
Sometimes I expect to see him walking by the river,
to see his tall, thin body move through the willows,
camera in hand. I don’t see him, of course, but I do,
I see him as a young man in a blue button-up shirt,
his hair cut short, his movements doe-like as he
picks his way through the rocks. And sometimes
I see him a young boy, still blonde, still shrieking
with joy at the splash he can make with a big river rock.
And sometimes I see him as the willows themselves,
as if he’s come back in everything—the willows,
the river, the stones, the trees, this woman
who is standing at the window, looking.
Water Speak
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged goodbye, language, lovers, river, water on April 25, 2025| 4 Comments »
When you say goodbye
fill each syllable with the sound
of the river as it kisses the shore
just beyond our window,
then, no matter what words you say,
I will hear the unending waves,
will smell the musty,
earthy scent on my skin
long after the words are gone.
There is home in the way
your words cling to me
like water beads on my skin.
This is how I remember
where I am from.
One Unpronounceable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged naming, nature, river on February 7, 2025| 4 Comments »
the river decides
it’s discovered me,
renames me after itself
One Stifled
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged freedom, restraint, river, singing, voice on January 27, 2025| 8 Comments »
this winter
I’ve turned into a river
beneath the ice, so much song
One for My Daughter, Made of Water
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, river, rules, water on January 14, 2025| 4 Comments »
the river must follow its channel,
but every cloud can tell you
water also flows up
Living in the River Bed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flood, past, river, self-destruction on January 5, 2025| 4 Comments »
The way the riverbank
remembers high water—
even many years later—
with logs and sticks lodged
high along its edges,
this is how it is I remember
you, the detritus of love
strewn all along my walls.
There is just a thin trickle now
and I’ve come to value clarity,
but remember the raging rush,
how it roared—a violent crush,
a terrible greatness—
how it tumbled everything
in its path. How the path
itself was never the same again.
One End of the Year
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged new year, openness, permeability, river, thoughts on December 29, 2024| 1 Comment »
these solid thoughts—
the river flows
right through them
Amidst the Cold of Winter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, darkness, family, ice, light, memory, play, river, winter on July 23, 2024| 12 Comments »
There was that winter day when the ice floe
had cracked the river ice into giant slabs
thick as my open hand, tall as a child.
Our family gathered on the river bank
and played with the fractured chunks to make
sculptures—ice huts and ice caves and
a long ice wall that curved and snaked
through the snow along the river’s edge
like the spine of a giant stegosaurus,
jagged and upright. It’s never happened
again. The ice slabs always freeze together
or crush into bits, but that night,
we went out with dozens of candles
and lit the ice structures from within.
And the glow then, the gold that blazed
through the ice, was the kind of luminous
magic that winter seldom knows. What
was shattered and sharp, heavy and cold,
became radiance, brilliance, a visible hope
I didn’t yet know I would need, some proof
of what might transpire in the winter
of the heart—how broken and frigid,
it still might become a means
to gather beauty, to amplify the light.
The Changing View
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, husband, love, marriage, river on July 18, 2024| 4 Comments »
He walks along the river’s edge,
boots up to his knees, pitchfork
balanced on his shoulder,
his handwoven bucket hat
balanced on his head. And
I fall in love again. Not with
the man I married, but with
the man he’s become—
the man who has pruned
the coyote willows for days,
for years, so we can see
the river as it changes from clear
to bright red from the storms.
Watch as it runs clear again.
Letter to the Dead
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, river, self-compassion, softening on July 13, 2024| 10 Comments »
How many times did I stand
on the shore with you and throw rocks
in this same river simply for the joy
of hearing them splash?
But today, my friend’s daughter
suggested we use sticks
to write invisible wishes on the rocks,
then kiss the stones before we tossed
them in. Perhaps you could guess
what I wished for. Aren’t I always
longing for peace in this world?
But there is so much of me
now you do not know.
Like how today, when I got
behind the car going twenty-seven
miles under the speed limit,
I didn’t call him an idiot.
I just went slower. See?
Things change. Even this woman
who is still throwing rocks
in the same river.
Only now the splash
makes me both laugh and cry.
And now, when I drive
behind a slow, slow person,
I can’t not think
of what wishes
they might write.