goin’ down

photo by shf

to the river

i had resisted for days

letting time and trouble

constrain my descending

to that place of flow

we take it slow

sun behind us casting from us

long shadows

ten legs six ears three noses

two tails and a booty

as we go lower I speak things out

like honest and crabby and out of place

then the wind takes the air

and i say no more

we all know where we are going

and yet everything looks new

the house on the crest of a hill

now hidden in the leaves of spring

the Himalayan blackberry vines pink

with blossom and unreeling from within

at the canyon oak the sniffing begins

the river bragging now its heft of treasure

then beyond the parking lot

a glint of truck

the flannel of a late riser

and how to roll with intrusion

then a rumbly reprieve

the squeal of metal on metal

let’s watch the train i whisper

as my feet plant in the road

angling toward where trestle meets solid ground

container after container pass over

wood-liquid-air-rhythm-hook-line-sinker

all this moving over moving water moving me

up the hill after the train

i woop-woop like a strange bird

as a flimsy shell-shaped cloud

grows about the pearly sun

goin’ down / photo by shf