(photo: Tumalo Falls, Oregon by Tim Schallberger)

A River’s Course

be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart – Ranier Rilke

 

I am a storm-child

born beneath shadows of basalt cliffs

and snow-clad evergreen.

I rage with gin clarity

through the mountains

empty of earth or her stains.

In the slow time of youth

I flee an incomprehensible past

and rush to an unknowable future

not perceiving the cascade

these rapids portend,

until I wake on the flatlands

to learn at last –

I have been falling all along.

 

I am a wanderer

winding serpentine on the earth

savoring her secrets and sediments

and strange new lands and life

and the mud and mysteries

that abound between my banks.

Time speeds as my waters slow

and in their roll – the sacramental scars

and sweet splendor of a distant youth.

 

I am a memory

my story is written in water

and sung in the crystalline blue

of the Æonean sea –

where I can flow at last

and at last be lost.

 

© Jedidiah Paschall

 

Written December 2002, Revised March 2018