By the River

Pink pedals of a cherry blossom sauntered along the coffee-brown river.
I planted my walk-worn feet at its edge. Quiet. Secure.
Palms to sky, sensing rhythms through lash and nostril.
Breath, deep as the pedals made their way and I sought release.
The silence spoke and I pressed my fingers to spring-wet earth.

At water calm, I lay my heavy straps on a tiny track.
Sun and shimmer from unfiltered water  boundary reflected from my fresh canopy.
The Sunday stillness was as opposite the Saturday crescendo strength of the falls.
But all from the Source.
I breathed again, and the wind listened.

"God, will you yet show? I've longed to know, that sacred Source, that power of life and love and deed remorse. Plains or hills or valley or dell, where, pray tell, does its future flow?"

The breeze kicked up, the windy part of the day.
Those blanket maple leaves that shadowed me from instant blindness of sharpest rays parted ever so, a beam hitting face, that I should know.

"How much, child, do you want to see? How much of me," beseeched He then, "how much of me, should now you see?
The river twines and travels where it ought,
But for you to know, that's not your lot.
You're here on Earth, planted still.
You're free of shame and guilt and grief,
Is that enough for this hour's relief?"

"God, I know that you are here.
It's just, this thing I hold so dear.
A thing I thought I needed most,
A thing that seems to've turned to ghost.
A thing, thought I, that brought delight.
A thing I prayed for day and night.
A thing 'twas meant to rest my plight,
A thing, I thought, that was my right."

A snap, a crack, a sudden crash,
A forest tree, time-strong and old,
Lost a limb and shed its mold,
To add a ring to a hundred stash.

On alert, I gaze around my patch of river forest with sudden sound.
The loss of limb was feet away.
Why, wise guardian, should you loose your limb without so much ceremony as soft splitting of knotty trunk?
Yet there it stood, in Sunday best.
Lending strength to osprey nest.
Its newer limbs flexed certain, more able to carry a better burden.
In seconds, had I witnessed all life itself?

A limb may fall and case a stir,
But rooted trunk sends fresh life pure,
To freshest buds waiting there,
Another bloom, a fig? A pear?

My heart turns back around.
That river slow. It's still again.
And I sit and listen and allow being in time to be all there is.
Observing. Noticing.
And mallard glides content along, its wake brushing the shore as my fingers brush the strands of wildflower in spring, just beneath the maple tree.
The sky-flyer and water-glider, well equipped.
A season for swimming and a season for flying and days for both.
He never sheds his royal, green crown, through water and air. 
What happens when feet are confused for flight?
Perhaps a sullen, silent song, under sunlit roof of maple.

"See, the ground," God called again.
"See how dust and dirt become once more that life and love you so adore.
From that you came and that return, but time today is yours to turn from void to form, that is your task, and I'll be there when you need to ask, if path you're on is yours secure.
I'll say today, the road you tread, it is the way, so rest your head.
Though river twines round Bend and Land, and pasture green seems gone again,
Let branch lie down and settle there.
Through tears you've grown, I see my son,
I see you there, you're not alone.
The scar you shoulder, the hope you hold,
It's all the truth, as sure as gold."

The flocks are gone now, and dried crystals stick to the edges of my mouth.
Wet dirt is between my finger tips and I sit there and continue to hear into the silence.
And that voice is hushed but no less sure.
The waters edge tipped its hat.
I've been trying to swim along that earthy vein with wings meant for heavenly futures.
I rose and fractal rays pierced my heart and completed their operation,
And the maple bid me farewell.