Published in Issue 119 of 34th Parallel Magazine
February 23, 2024
If Not The River
You can hear the sound of fishing in the river, the breeze brushing in, the way it mumbles the unfathomable, and the faint sound of having come all this way for nothing, the snap and shush of the fishing rod as you wade into a lunatic sunset which is in all honesty an ordinary dusk, swinging against the empty day, sweat sliding down the hollow of your back, the shadows so sweet they make your eyes flutter and moan. You can fill your head with sunburn and your continents with lures and weights, and the smooth algae-covered stones, and the fishing poles and hearts, easily folding and floating against the stinging the loss, the silent, massive patience you bring to bear here, the elegant willows bending as they become shade, slight lacerations healed and the river's surface reflecting the heat of what's left undone, stands of oaks with careless purpose, if not the roots then branches hundreds of years alive, and the contented heft of your cast, the pole in your hand for the first, the fifth, the five hundredth time. Who can ever live up to their voice, because if not the gathering of the gear or the scouting of the secret bend, if not the warm sand along the path, exceptionally more holy than any church, if not the wandering, like last night was a shore and you've washed up here, if not the screeching of the Cooper's hawk reaching right under your ribs where everything is pounding and full of current, then no reason, no reason at all, but hidden, just hidden, and the river that never asks for permission to flow through.
February 23, 2024
If Not The River
You can hear the sound of fishing in the river, the breeze brushing in, the way it mumbles the unfathomable, and the faint sound of having come all this way for nothing, the snap and shush of the fishing rod as you wade into a lunatic sunset which is in all honesty an ordinary dusk, swinging against the empty day, sweat sliding down the hollow of your back, the shadows so sweet they make your eyes flutter and moan. You can fill your head with sunburn and your continents with lures and weights, and the smooth algae-covered stones, and the fishing poles and hearts, easily folding and floating against the stinging the loss, the silent, massive patience you bring to bear here, the elegant willows bending as they become shade, slight lacerations healed and the river's surface reflecting the heat of what's left undone, stands of oaks with careless purpose, if not the roots then branches hundreds of years alive, and the contented heft of your cast, the pole in your hand for the first, the fifth, the five hundredth time. Who can ever live up to their voice, because if not the gathering of the gear or the scouting of the secret bend, if not the warm sand along the path, exceptionally more holy than any church, if not the wandering, like last night was a shore and you've washed up here, if not the screeching of the Cooper's hawk reaching right under your ribs where everything is pounding and full of current, then no reason, no reason at all, but hidden, just hidden, and the river that never asks for permission to flow through.