Tule fog threads the red tips
of bone-gray willow stalks. Water lisps
in an eddy’s clot, cackles through the riffles.
The murmur of crows descends on a downdraft.
The sand and gravel bar below the bridge—
inscribed by braided streams—is a mosaic
of polished stones, lost feathers, the skeletons
of spawned-out salmon: a cuneiform of death and drift.
How many mornings have I stepped into this river,
felt its inexorable pull—a muted ache
unspool an old affliction that never found redress.
And how many mornings have I watched the fog
gleam radiant with the sunrise—
a luminous blizzard of refracted light:
an alchemy, a transubstantiation.
My poem appeared in Inspirit Magazine in 2005. When I took this photo, just this morning, I knew the two would go together.
