Bridge Over the River (A Prose Piece)

The river splayed her legs before me; one long, wet piece glimmering in both directions with panes of light settling in sporadic patterns, taking on reflections and teaching them that a tree is not what it would have you see. The river between two bustling trunks of land knows better and has the gentle faith to bathe rock, stones, small islands, wood planks, duck bellies, and wanton roots. Her voice comes out like a kind warrior caught between train caterwaul against her small clear ebb with the sincere grace to let the pebbles show before she’s ended her domain. I scoop her up in my heart but she is too light and I too heavy to hold her bounty; she is the fierce source of thousand year old blood running through me, giving me the consciousness to behold her trembling naked unabashed form. I am ignominious; I am humbled; I am brittle dry before this Queen of wise force. Her shapes are pure and true; mine awkward and manipulated. I sit at the ledge of this bridge, watching her disappear into the shadow where she tells all of her secrets to no one, and I sing to her. I wail and feel the tumbling mane I wear to protest the short time I’ll have to make love to this river and her cousins. My sounds are caught in thick wind; but she receives my cries like the tears of so many, and carries them along, gaily, earnestly, turning our sounds over and over again inside her into pearls. And another day, all that I come to offer at this advancing night will settle into the bed of her form. And I become the river. The mad woman laughing and howling over the ledge of the bridge at sunset isn’t dying how the people who don’t stop or honk or think passing in cars expect. She’s already more dead alive than she could ever become leaping off into the river.