A river, a powerful force that moves the earth, carves and cuts and shapes it into new landscapes and creates vessels to hold drinks and dreams or lazy swirls of dancing leaves and children swimming. A river flows having both a start and a destination clearly knowing more about its life and existence than most people know. It travels and changes, never holding the same water in a spot, yet always holding the same water throughout the trip. It can be added to or diminished by rain or sun. It can be stolen or used to replenish and grow, to flood and destroy or wither away under the long drought until it appears to be nothing but parched earth awaiting a shift.
I sit beside it in want of peace and find it in the sounds of water and stone, accompanied by the song of jays and owls, the screeches of robins and the odd foghorn toots of the mockingbird. It can be enhanced by the tickle of raindrops that add staccato rhythms to the sonorous rumbles of falls and rapids. I can feel its cool with toe dips or spray and dunk my face in like a donut in coffee and enjoy the trickle through my hair and down my face and neck and chest. In it I can be cleansed of the day’s accumulation of both body and soul detritus. Washed away, washed away, washed away.
We sat together at river’s edge saying nothing yet holding nothing back. We had wearied our journey to this spot of quiet and both of us were reticent to break the spell of silence. In it you gifted me your friendship and I gave myself up to languish in its pulse. We sat looking at the world and only sensing the presence of the other. It needed nothing else.
You are gone now, not just not here but gone. The hallowed voices of the river mourn your loss reminding me of you stretched out in the shimmer of sun, shoes and socks as a pillow, naked heels and toes like stones letting the river water adorn them. Fishing poles and lines out with bobbers, red and white, doing nothing. We didn’t care. We weren’t there for fish. We were there for the river and one another.
I miss you, my friend. But the river brings your life back to me. You are not lost. At the river’s edge I know I can always find you again; remind you again, you are my friend again, then, now, everyday – especially in the flows of the river.