“…from here that looks like a bucket of water…but from an ant’s point of view it’s a vast ocean, from an elephant’s just a cool drink, and to a fish, of course, it’s home. So, you see, the way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from.”
from The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, 1961
the years roll on,
one in front of the other,
and i wonder
if you still smoke those short cigarettes
and close your eyes gently with the first hit of dark spanish tobacco,
if you paint at an open sea-facing window,
if you drink your coffee sweet and midnight black,
if you ever,
do you ever,
let yourself remember…
we are moving away from the river and my thoughts slip sideways into the things i’ll miss–the marsh, the herons, the geese, the egret
the water looked calm, but the current
moved swiftly below the surface
a photograph trips a memory
deep swells of longing overwhelm me
a cigarette is lit
coffee is sipped
the sun warms the backs of red-winged black birds as they fly across the water–
i hear the screech of a blue jay
and watch the sparrows flee the bench
the pup growls at a point in the distance
and i shield my tired eyes to get a better look
“I bury my face in the pillow that smells of must and damp. Its cotton slip is as cold as marble. It is only here, alone and in the dark, that I can allow those thoughts some rein. Thoughts that come from nowhere, from dreams, taking me delirious hostage. I long for sleep again, because only in sleep can I slip the bonds of what is possible and right. But as I have found so often in life, what you truly long for eludes you.”
from the book, The Tenderness of Wolves, by Stef Penney
“Arthur had urged her to plunge her feet in a deep, swiftly running mountain stream to feel the rhythm of the water. Something about the proper young scholar suggested that he was not the free spirit he seemed to be. Georgia had kept her stockings on.”
from the book, O’Keeffe & Stieglitz, An American Romance, by Benita Eisler
sometimes winter rays on the water reflect
all of what we cannot say
to me, the seagulls are always connected with the river in winter–
resting on the frigid wind currents–
crying out in the deep allegheny valley
that carries their haunting echoes upriver
the day awakens
and with it–
hopefulness
