You sat in the tin canoe threading tent’s night torch on alder leaves, deliberating on the imagining circles the river had hied up from history.
Morning waited in the eaves of the world, curled unseen over the yet-dark roofs of trees. We both know it was the last trip to this attic of earth still warm with discoveries. Your fingers lingered long in the water, believing the sense of trout toiling back on them from a pool’s deep mystery.
I had assumed your slow motion meant this touch to last longer, the casual finger drownings beneath ought surfacing blue dawn. You had spent your night without adjectives: “Things are,” you said, hanging your hat on the hard parts of sentences. I knew my one poem had fallen harshly on your ears.
I leaped to get the copy duffel-bagged away at the river campsite. That’s when downstream took you tinned and tabernacled against dawn, a cargo of soft criticism floating away on an Atlantic feeder. Now, even the river is revised, the bones of it at whiter, cleaner density.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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