The Discerning River

The discerning river moves through the crowded valley woods like an ancient crooked spine beneath the vertebrae bridges of fallen trees it's restless currents strum against strings of rich green algae that cling like eels onto polished stones thrusting waves that curl at their crest and dive into deep musical torrents stirring up river bed soup served in ladles churning downstream to the mouths and bellies of trout parked like stalled cars in the lanes of a swamped highway where all the commuting species race and dart and hide and hunt for their fleeting lives the waters are a living canvas under the sun's crocheted light that needles it's way through cedar boughs to blanket the skin of the river in warmth filling the depths with spectral glow before slipping like a gold coin into the slot of the darkening horizon leaving the river to dream below over it's rippling reflection the moon climbs up like a spider into the evening sky on a web of stars riding a lunar arc into the night where from it's celestial thread it hangs over the river's valley spinning a rich light that falls like strands of silk from above landing between the shadows and reflections cast by trees onto the flowing water the river cuts with a fluid chisel into the permeable crust of the earth like an eccentric sculptor preoccupied alone lost in her art as time pours on unnoticed between these two ice ages the one that released the river and the one to gather it back again