In the winter of the world
the space between the banks
is dormant and dead.
Everything is still.
Cold-bound.
Barely breathing.
The river seems rooted,
a trapping, grabbing tale
of deep-seeded ice
that snarls at the sun
and locks its jaw against life.
You can walk on the water
and feel it insisting on its own inevitability.
It is too-far hard-frozen to ever crack and cede its hold.
But when the softening air of spring
winnows through the high hills
and whispers a quiet warmth
to quicken the hearts of the trees,
a
steady
drain
of
single
drops
drips and rolls,
trickling and tumbling,
turning to a hundred tendrils
of waking water
all clawing away
at the clench of winter.
And down along the river,
where rounded rock meets old sand,
those far-off sudden springs
find fuller voice.
Gravity-gathered and
gyred by the
gradient
they spill out,
shouting,
into the silent streambed,
slowly
living.
to
back
it
lifting
Beneath the cold calm surface
currents start to
spin
again
and the rising water pushes up at winter’s ceiling
with all the power of slow truth.
The river arches its back.
At the edges of its surety
the ice fails.
Grudging movement comes on the flood
and the frozen floor pulls
up
and
clear
of the bank’s earthen bones.
The long-held quiet
creaks and falls into
cracks and groans,
filling the forest with
the breast-deep growling of a season’s hard habits
breaking
from
the stress.
Uncountable droplets from untold trees
are pushing the world apart.
Everything staggers. Sways.
Faults
appear,
fine
at
first
then flaring
wider as the flow’s grasp
grabs harder hold.
Whole sheets start to shift away,
sliding into the tide,
only to surrender to their own strains
and
split
once
more.
Then, in a deep rush
the river becomes
a living slurry
of ruined certainty,
a carpet of roiled
serenity wracked by
waves and rapids.
Sullen slabs of thick winter,
threshed in the tumult,
are tumbled over
to show their
dirt-dark foundations.
all the river-world seems to roll
running and running and
watering winter downstream and
washing away the season’s firm assertions and
clearing the channel in
an aching release and
bringing new breath back the banks
The ice will not yet yield
It is not done.
At every bend and bottleneck it crowds up, dives down, fights back, digs in.
A jumbled jam of frozen defiance.
But it cannot hold.
Cannot last.
Cannot help
but give way to the
weight of water
backing up behind it.
Spring will have its river.
And then you can walk out into the water
to feel the free currents
singing a
song
of
ripples
around
your
ankles
calling you out into the summer of the world.
