River gods

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

one thousand whispers of water pull around my feet

smoothing over round stone

when a small movement in the air focuses my line of sight to a point

smaller than my thumbnail

~ ~ ~

an inch worm

is lowering herself

~

~

~

on an invisible line that swings her wide in the air’s lightest breath as

the creature drops

inch ~

by ~~

inch ~~~

down to the fast water

she must not know, I think, where she’s going

and my second thought

is to intervene, or else this little life will surely be lost to the current

because what does an inch worm know of rivers?

and

how easy would it be to sweep my hand through the air, catch the thread, pull her to safety?

but my hand is stayed and she lands

—how gracefully!—

on an edge of roughened stone at the water’s edge.

~-~-~0

there performs the simplest of miracles:

takes a drink of water

then long minutes run over the water as she toils back up her lifeline,

up to the waiting branch where uneven geometric shapes have been eaten out of the leaves

she twists and spins bends and unbends

~~—~~~—- ~~~~~~_~~~~_~~~— ~~~~

every molecule of her spring-green body engaged in this act of ascendance

all for a drink of water.

I imagine that sip, that quenching of thirst

perhaps the tiniest, satisfied sigh

I imagine the river gods I don’t know how to speak to are shaking their heads at my bafflement

What does this little life, they muse, with its human feet in the current, know of rivers and worms?

Perhaps they too have been tempted to intervene

to sweep a hand and pull us to safety

for how many now suffer from another’s misguided thirst

the river is running and mothers are crying out for their children

how many lost in our failure to witness the worthy miracle that is ablaze within each of them

we cannot undo it

we cannot undo it

we cannot undo it

but, oh my gods, that it could be undone

~-~-~

there are driving thirsts that cannot be quenched.

but maybe those river gods still trust us enough, for now, to stay their

hands, to let us find our landing place,

to dedicate entire afternoons to the blessing of a sip of water,

to then be willing to engage every muscle, every molecule, in acts of

our

own

ascendance.

~