"What the river says, that is what I say"
--William Stafford
Samples from
Emergences and Spinner Falls
This is the river
that didn’t appear on the map
that spread across the end
of one of those endless two-tracks
angling off a logging road
or, perhaps, it wasn’t a two-track
at all, just a space between the trees
that you mistook and ended here.
No tracks but the curve
of deer hooves in the bank sand,
the path of ancients
disappearing into brush.
The river surges by,
its unmistakable clarity.
Even in the pines
on the far bank, each needle
sparks a single fire
rubbed from it by the wind.
It’s enough to know where you are
when the river narrows and spreads,
coils and stretches into an evening
that sprinkles scotch into the green shadows
of reeds and trees.
There is a turn that tunnels into dark all day
where an oak pendulum rows
a long rhythmic sentence,
and there are straits flecked with boulders,
a constellation of moons
holding their faces to the light.
Even if you don’t know where you are
you follow water that knows its course,
whether you wriggle awake from a nightmare
or stare into the thin mortality of the mirror.
In the dark pocket under the boulder,
behind the long fingers of ripples
reaching from nests of branches,
an old trout keeps time,
evening slides down the trunks
and memory is a wavering shape
in the weeds and long strands of grass.
The air buzzes and spits specks of fire.
The river pulls every possibility downstream.
Come with me into November.
The fields are amber stubble:
dried husks, tufts of straw
and weeds turned to bone.
In October, a rotting pumpkin
rose instead of the moon.
We celebrated the Dead Festivals
and dressed in spirit rags.
Now darkness floods the lowlands
of morning, pours over the ledge of dusk.
Though deer slip from the thicket
searching a scant green memory of summer,
some flowering after the bitter frost,
this is the time of their mating.
Don’t stand at the window watching for the snow.
copyright Robert Haight 2004-2009