BOOK OF RIVER
A thousand page book
On ‘What the Rivers Say’
Illustrated by hand with all
The ripples and such.
Equivalents of sound in line
And what the mind says.
And what the wind says
And where it leads
And where it leads back to
Again and again.
A work folded from
One sheet of paper.
A work transparent, translucent,
Opaque.
Where pages and words
Appear above and below each other.
A multitude of one view, an explanation,
A demonstration of the inexplicable.
And all the voices there,
All the voices from along its length,
Rumbled and whispered
And sung and roared.
Tiny sparkled voices, great voices,
Minnow voices, tree root voices,
Drowned minds of poets
And their pale ghosts.
Voices of tributaries, voices of puddles,
Voices of pools, voices of dribbles,
Of moss dripping, of sodden earth,
Of scoured stone, of squiggling,
Worming things.
Reflections still and stately,
Pride that confuses and leads nowhere,
But the doubt that up may be down.
And the river bed, ah! the river bed:
A history of shatterings, of droughts,
Of flood race, of lost footings, of twisted ankles,
Of sobs, of precious things lost
Forever, forever, forever.
Down to the sea with them,
With the gold and the glistening
And the feathers and fluff of life.
The leaves spun to colour
And down away, away.
Stretched from there to here to there,
Beyond distances and the taste of soil
And the taste of heather and the taste
Of ice and of wind in the sparkling hills.
Self-created words, worm words,
Caddis larvae words, fast, flitting,
Slow floating words.
Half sung, half spoken, half heard,
Half, half, some other,
Some other meaning completely.
Completely star-worn and moon-urged.
Life moving downwards towards itself.
A book of river.
—
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simonhlilly 