The rivers of my life:
moving looms of light,
anchored beneath the log
at night I can see the moon
up through the water
as shattered milk, the nudge
of fishes, belly and back
in turn grating against log
and bottom; and letting go, the current
lifts me up and out
into the dark, gathering motion,
drifting into an eddy
with a sideways swirl,
the sandbar cooler than the air:
go speak it clearly,
how the water goes
is how the earth is shaped.
It is not so much that I got
there from here, which is everyone's
story: but the shape
of the voyage, how it is pushed
outward in every direction
until it stopped:
roots of plants and trees,
certain coral heads,
photos of splintered lightning,
blood vessels,
the shape of creeks and rivers.
Jim Harrison, from "The Theory & Practice of Rivers"
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