Obviously

 

It was just another walk to the river.

Past the middle school,

the alley,

the church.

One foot in front of the other.

Grown men playing at being swordsmen in South Park.

Bygone ways from bygone days.

People strolling along on Mass. Street.

Snatches of conversation,

nothing worth repeating.

A mother baby-talking to her baby,

baby riding high on daddy’s shoulders.

“Too much sun. Too much sun.”

The ghost of Don McLean singing American Pie

outside the store that sells beer brewing stuff

to people who want to brew beer.

I listened to the music for a while.

And when they had caught the last train for the coast,

I got up to get a drink from the water fountain nearby.

The water was warm -

but it was wet.

It was water.

The Dusty Bookshelf was crowded.

People lined up to buy books.

More books piled up than

anyone could sell in a month of Saturdays.

And then some.

I walked out.

And then finally as I crossed the Kaw River Bridge

I thought I might just as well turn back...

but inertia carried me on down to the water’s edge.

I found a drift-log resting in the shade of a sycamore tree.

A pleasant breeze.

Cicadas singing.

City sounds receding into the background.

I rested.

With an unfocused gaze,

I reflected on a river reflecting sky.

I noted what I had noted.

And time passed as it always does.

And now the past is past.

I have have written

what I have written

and I wonder:

Have I said too much?

Have I said too little?

Probably.

 

One blackberry at a time

My friend invited me to come over to his house to share in his surplus of blackberries. Being a friend, I could hardly refuse, but it was something of a nuisance, ducking underneath the netting draped over the canes to keep the birds out, scrambling around on hands and knees, reaching awkwardly up into the canes to get to the ripe ones almost out of my reach.

Blackberries just don’t ripen all at the same time, rather they ripen one at a time in their clusters from green to red to black, or more precisely, they eventually ripen to a very deep, dark, lustrous purple. At that point the berry will very nearly drop into your hand when you reach for it. But my point is that you have to pick each blackberry one at a time.

So you look for the ripe ones. Sometimes they’ll hide behind a leaf, sometimes they are just one more finger’s-length away from your outstretched fingers. But seek and you shall find. Blackberries!

Sometimes you’ll get lucky and collect two or three ripe ones in a handful before dropping them into the bowl. Eventually there will be enough in the bowl for a cobbler or crisp. And if you’re really ambitious, there’s jam. But I rarely want to work that hard. Thankfully, my friend has a relatively small patch of blackberries.

But as picking blackberries goes, it turns out that a blackberry will end up in your mouth – one blackberry at a time. And then another. And then you begin to realize that one blackberry is sweeter, juicier than another. They’re all good, mind you, but as you’re picking them, one blackberry is sweeter and juicer than another. And, oh, just how sweet and juicy that can be. Better than you imagined. And then the picking becomes a quest.

And yes, all of those blackberries that do make it to the bowl will be as good as they can be all jumbled together in a cobbler or crisp, but I recommend eating blackberries one at a time – handed to you like a gift. Juicy. Sweet.

You’ll taste the difference. You’ll taste the wonder.

Happy Anniversary

  

After 35 years of marriage, this is mostly what I want: to chop vegetables at the dining room table while Dawn is putting together the pasta in the kitchen.

I pick up a Japanese eggplant from the cutting board and turn around, pretending that it’s a gun. Dawn laughs. I chop some more vegetables. She yells at my back from the other room that the music is too loud. I pretend not to hear. It’s Paul Simon on the CD player, but I’m not really paying attention to him either. I’m mostly trying not to leave slices of my finger on the cutting board.

At some point, Dawn tells me to go down to the basement for a couple of onions. Later she tells do something with the goat cheese. I have to ask her again what she meant because I wasn’t really listening. And then she tells me. Again. And then she tells me to get some parsley from the garden. About a third cup. When I come back with a small handful of parsley, she sends me back for another small handful. “Yes, chef!”

When Dawn and I cook together, I’m always the sous chef, she’s always the exec. We both like it that way.

I get to be the man opening the jar of Kalamata olives. I get to chop vegetables. I get to take the scraps out to the compost pile. She makes sure things come together when they need to come together. We both said ‘I do’ and now we’re doing it.

The words Dawn and I exchange when we’re cooking together are entirely insignificant. They are neither prose nor poetry. We simply punctuate the air with a word or two at a time for emphasis. It’s the doing that matters.

Chopping eggplant and squash, onions and peppers. And garlic, plenty of garlic. A few words back and forth just to help move things along. And yet I think it’s those few words and sentences – spoken without even our noticing – that weave our lives together. Without those few words - without the repetition of doing things together using merely incidental words - there is no marriage. So there will be thousands - maybe millions - of those incidental words spoken over the life of our marriage. But nobody’s counting. Or even really listening much of the time.

It’s like this. You pick up a word. Take a fragment of a sentence. Put vegetables in a skillet, turn up the heat, and soon you have ratatouille. Slice a loaf of ciabatta in half and toast it in the oven. Add goat cheese, sun dried tomatoes and Kalamata olives to hot pasta, and soon the two of you are eating out on the patio, telling each other how good the food tastes.

And so there we were. On a mild evening in August with the sun going down behind the neighbor’s trees, words had been strung together in slightly longer strings as we ate together on the patio, but it still wasn’t about the talking. It’s just ratatouille.

And that’s mostly what I want.

 

 

A meditation

When uncertainty and doubt threaten to destroy you,
don't hide yourself from the world

Mother Earth awaits

Immerse yourself in the ever flowing waters

Cleanse your spirit

Your own wholeness rests within you

Be still and know yourself.

...

On a boathouse bench

I have been looking for a word to describe the feeling of sitting on a bench in the shade of the boathouse in Burcham Park, the wide open sky, brilliant blue, clear reflections on muddy ripples on the surface of the river ever so slowly flowing by.

It was only yesterday, already the memory fading. I could then hear the distant sound of cars and trucks crossing the turnpike bridge up river. A freight train rumbled by unseen on the far side of the levee across the way. A young man and young woman walked passed me, holding hands.

As I sat on that bench, I played for a while with a loop of string I had picked up earlier from the sidewalk as I walked to the river. Cat’s Cradle.  Sometimes a pattern of diamonds. Sometimes a tangle of knots. And then on the unseen air, I looked up to see cottonwood fluff drifting by on the early summer breeze.

I had been spending just an idling time on a sunny afternoon. And then my mind gradually became more keenly aware of everything around me – the sights and sounds, the light touch of a soft breeze – and also of a growing quietness in my mind. And there I was.

And yet, after more time passing, a moment turning into minutes uncounted, I stood up and simply walked away.  I had entered and left - a place so pleasing – a time so agreeable - all of it as ordinary as the mid-afternoon sun - and yet becoming an inexplicable wonder in my mind. 

I had been content - at ease - as I sat there yesterday afternoon, but the words here seem insufficient. And I could easily return to that place in Burcham Park on another fine-weathered day and yet not find the feeling I now only am trying to remember with this quick word sketch. Or one day – it might be any day at all - I will wander somewhere else along the river, just looking just for a place to sit. And then, perhaps, that feeling I am unable to define, will come to me, drifting on by like cottonwood fluff on an early summer breeze.

Sitting on a drift log on Willow Beach

Willow trunks, cut by beavers, had toppled, pointing towards the river. The trunks had again sprouted fresh willow leaves, quivering in a light afternoon breeze. I heard the soft lapping of water against the sand, water lapping softly against the sand.

And then I thought I heard a voice. And after an immeasurable pause – once again, a voice. It might have been you, whispering in my mind. It might have been the freshening wind, fluttering restless willow leaves, pale green against the silent gray-white sky. I searched the far bank.

Then a father and young son walked by from upriver, crossing behind the place where I sat. The son chattered to his father, his walking stick too tall for him by half. I watched them playing for a while downriver by the water’s edge.

A crow cawed. Young cottonwoods grew skyward through the sand. Drifts of driftwood. Willow leaves turning. River water lapping.

I remembered all of this from another time. I had surely been here before. I heard a voice. It might have been you, whispering in my mind.

And high overhead, I saw the silhouette of a turkey vulture, soaring on the wind.

Random thoughts

Does facebook replace face to face? Did radio and TV replace front porches? Do big boxes replace mom and pops? Do apples equal oranges? What about picking cherries or crab apples? Are clever phrases better than nuance. Do my thoughts negate yours? This is not an argument. And it's not both or neither. Or a little bit of one and a little bit of another. I had the best apple crisp I have ever eaten at a friend's house, oh, maybe it was a couple of months ago. Maybe it was last year. She's a little older than I am. But man, is she funny. I wish I could tell you how. But I'm not that good with words. Not even if I were talking to you could I tell you how she is funny. To tell you truth, I don't understand it myself. Anyway, I don't think I've known her for more than a few years. We're in a book group together. I usually don't read the books. But nobody minds. Sometimes we don't even talk about the book. But that's not the point I was making. I was talking about apple crisp. And my friend. Who I don't really know very well. I don't think she's on facebook. But she would be a hoot on facebook. She says 'hoot' sometimes. She likes me. This was never about the apple crisp, but it is. I don't want to talk about Eleanor, I want to talk to her. To Eleanor. But with this damn virus thing I don't know when that's going to happen. And there's this other friend. Well, she's half my age. I met her at the coffee shop that I hang out at. She's a barista. But the coffee shop is closed for the duration. As they say. But nobody says 'duration.' Anyway, Bailie says 'fuck' more than she says 'hoot.' And she has two daughters. And her older daughter says 'fuck' more than I do. I try to keep up. But there was this time.I was showing her this math trick. Did I forget to mention that I was tutoring her in math. Maybe I should tell you her name so I don't have to use pronouns so much. It's Cassie. Short for Cassiopeia. Not really, I'm making this all up. Well not all of it. Just the names. Now why would I do that? That's rhetorical. Anyway, it got to be that Cassie and I just messed around more than we did math. But I was showing her this thing with a Mobius strip. You cut it in half... but that's not the point. Anyway, she kept on saying she knew what was going to happen and I said keep cutting. And then what happened, happened and she looked up at me and said, 'what the f...' She couldn't even get the whole 'fuck' out, she was so surprised. I will never forget the look on her face. And I can't tell you how many times she looked at me. Never the same, but always her. Cassie. And Cassie keeps changing. I couldn't count the changes if I wanted to. You should have seen the look on her face. And I don't even know her that well. Do you know you can see Cassiopeia in the night sky if you know where to look. And when. And this is just rambling pointless nonsense. Fucking words. I get so goddam tired of facebook. You shouldn't have got me started. I should have quit when I got to Seymour. Get it? That's a lame joke. Bailie would have laughed. Did I tell you I go to a coffee shop to drink iced tea? That's the truth and a lie at the same time. And don't take that as my point. I don't want to make a fucking point. I don't even want to make an ordinary point. I just want to see someone. And not just anyone, And I don't even know who I want to see more. And why am I telling you this? Am I telling you anything? Something? I guess I should finish this. I've got laundry to do. That's what my Mom would say at the end of her letters, Or something like that. It's been a long, long time. Her name was Evelyn.

Coronatime

I had been sitting at an outdoor table at my favorite coffee shop for what had seemed to be a very long time. Aimee’s is closed for the duration, of course, but I had to sit somewhere. I had brought a water bottle with we so I would have something with me to drink. It was water. In the past, I usually would have gotten the currant iced tea. Had it been last week? Last month? I was losing track of my days.

I just sat there in the shade of the building at my side on the sidewalk in the shade. I felt redundant. The wooden folding chair I was sitting on was a little bit uneven. I shifted it. It didn’t get any better. I tried to record some of the past week’s goings on in my journal. I stared as the blank page stayed blank.

If you can’t remember anything, does that mean nothing happened? Or maybe time has stopped? Or is it time that is passing you by? Am I waiting here for a bus that will never come? How long had I been sitting there, anyway?

How long had I been sitting there, anyway?  I had said that already.

Yesterday I thought it was Saturday. But it was only Wednesday. Or last week? Or next week?

We’re all living in coronatime now, people.

Limbo.

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m even still actually alive. Actually still alive. What difference does it make? Are my eyes actually open, or is this all actually just a bad dream? Or both? And I keep hearing things.

Ground control to Major Tom. No. That was definitely last week. I think. Ground control to Major Tom. I wrote that in something I wrote last week. I think it must have been was another time when I was sitting here? I think it was last week. But I still keep hearing the refrain. “Do you hear me Major Tom? Do you hear me Major Tom? Do you hear me Major Tom ...” I’m pretty sure that was David Bowie. 1972. And I still hear the refrain going round and round in my head. And it's 2020.

I don’t know how to make sense of anything anymore.

I sat.

And as I sat there on a rickety chair not watching the world not go around, I thought I saw a young woman running by where I was sitting. She was wearing maroon spandex. One running shoe against the sidewalk. Then the other. A dark pony tail bobbing back and forth. And then she ran by again – only she was going the other way. Could that be right? Coming? Going? Is that how it’s supposed to work? Except that I was pretty sure that I saw her running in South Park on Wednesday. Or was it Saturday?

What difference does it make? Does it make any difference?  I am here. I think I am here. But I don’t know where I am. Or when.

It’s like getting hit by a bus. And then you stand up, a little dazed. But when you check yourself up and down nothing seems to be broken. And then you get hit by bus.

When will it stop? Can you hear me Major Tom? Can you hear me Major Tom?

I sat. Empty pages blowing down the empty street. No buses. Only young women running by.  Back and forth. Up and down. Coming and going. And one guy. He was hardly sweating. He just went by and I never saw him again.

The stores around me were all closed. The coffee shop was closed. Everything was closed. Maybe it was New Year’s Day and we were all just really hungover. Hunkered down. Waiting for the dull throbbing ache in our heads to subside.

Can you hear me Major Tom? Can you hear me Major Tom?

I had no idea how long I had been sitting there in front of my coffee shop? I looked down at my wrist watch to see if it might be time to go home for supper yet. But there was nothing on my wrist. Not for a hundred years. Nothing on my wrist. Nothing on my mind. Time had lost its meaning.

Limbo.

Nothing is real.

And then I thought I heard a marching band playing in South Park. I turned my head to look. The stoplight changed from red to green, but that was it. Nothing. I began to gather up my stuff. I couldn’t stay there at the Aimee’s. They were closed. And my water bottle was empty. I was sure I had heard something.

And then I heard it again. Voices. Drums. Cellos.

Nothing is real. And nothing to get hung about.

I held my phone up to my ear. It was the Beatles calling.

Strawberry Fields Forever  (Youtube Link) 

Listen to the song. If it makes you cry, you’re not dead yet. And if you don’t, maybe next time you will. Cry. All that we have now is Strawberry fields – forever.

Ground control to Major Tom

It’s the age of the coronavirus. It’s a time of uncertainty. And so I did what I often do, I walked to the river.

The sun had tried to come out earlier in the afternoon, but the day had turned gray again. Light jacket weather. For me the river is a reminder of constant change – and the endurance of things. Sometimes I just watch the water as it makes its way to the sea.

On my way to the Kaw River Bridge, I stopped at Aimee’s Coffeehouse for my usual glass of iced tea. Cary, the owner, had reopened only for delivery and pickup orders. I sat outside at a table on the patio. I scribbled a few notes as I savored my tea. Mostly I just watched the few scatterings of people wandering along the sidewalk.

A man about my age I recognized but didn’t know by name walked up and got a cup of coffee and a pastry at the front door. He sat down at a considerable social distance from me across the patio. As a courtesy, he asked if I minded if he had a cigarette. I didn’t. I joked that he was downwind anyway.

Then an older woman wheeled up behind her walker along with an older man in a cowboy hat. She said that they were living at Vermont Towers, a residence for seniors. They had walked to the bank. Now they were heading back. She ordered two coffees – one with cream and sugar and one black. We sat together on the patio, slightly closer to each other than the recommended social distance, but it seemed to be a small risk.

Joanne quickly introduced herself and soon we had all met each other - and in the lyrics of David Bowie we were  “sitting in a tin can/ far above the world/ Planet Earth is blue/ and there's nothing I can do.” It was just the four of us, old and getting older, simply chatting together as people will often do at a coffee shop. Phil told a joke - not that funny, but funny enough. And then he told another one. Joanne made point of saying that she and John weren’t a couple. They were just friends. She laughed and said that she had always hoped to find a man with blond hair and blue eyes.

I asked her if Robert Redford might be her type.

Oh yes, she had replied. In fact she said that she had nearly met him once when she was younger. Nearly. A friend had told her that Robert Redford was going to attend an Eagle Scout ceremony at the Mormon Church. Joanne wasn’t a Mormon, but she sure went to church on that day. She was sitting near the back when she saw him come in through a side door near the front. She laughed as she recounted how she had spent the entire service looking at the back of Robert Redford’s head.

I sat there, leaning up against the iron patio railing and imagined that in her day, Joanne might have been quite pretty, with soft blond hair and blue eyes. Now her hair was tightly curled and gray. Her eyes sparkled when she laughed. My guess was that she laughed as easily then as she did with us.

The times have always been uncertain. A little more this week, perhaps, than last. John told us that in the time he had lived in Vermont Towers - not really that long - three residents had died. Phil pointed out that none of us will get out of here alive. A kind of punch line. I had to laugh a little.

I looked across the street at the Granada, a concert venue closed for the duration. The marquee  read: Stay strong, Lawrence. Be kind. Be well.

And then I had finished my iced tea and said my goodbyes. As I walked down the street Joanne called out to me: take care of yourself.

When I got to the bridge, I saw that the river was a little lower than the day before, although still high for this time of year. I could hear the honking of geese echoing off the Bowersock Hydropower Plant. As I headed back home, I looked over the railing to see a pair of Canada geese feeding near the south bank of the river – making plans for the future.

So the world is changing. Some things will stay the same. And some of us won’t make it to the other side. But here’s the question I have to ask: will we be able to laugh with each other when we get there?

Poem: a spider ...

......................................................................................................................................................................................... 

a spider

dangles from

a silken thread

the ice moon

drowns

in my garden pond

don’t wait up

Still life at Wheatfields

I met a friend for breakfast.
I hadn't seen her in a long time.

She ordered coffee and a couple of eggs.

I had the cinnamon roll and ice water.

We sat and talked about this and that.

And then she got up 
   and put on her sweater and hat.

She went one way.

I went the other.

Crossing over

I have tried for some time to write poetry. I have looked carefully at the world around me and have considered my words. I have tried to reach some unknown reader.

Then the other day, I was walking back from the river. The air was cool. The sky was a late afternoon blue. There was a thin scattering of clouds like fish scales and I thought ...

... and then I stopped thinking that thought.

All this time think that I had failed to understand. Being a poet has almost nothing to do with the unknown reader. To be a poet, I should write words, nothing more and nothing less. My subject might be banal, my metaphors lacking, my words ill-crafted – my poems might not make any sense to anyone else in the whole world whatsoever – and be clunky.

Or maybe, just maybe, my poems might be good. Who’s to say? To be a poet, I think that I should just forget about all that.

And so I finally crossed over.

Here’s one of my poems. I didn’t write it for you, but you can read it or not.

I was walking back from the river.

The air was cool.

The sky was a late afternoon blue.

I saw clouds like fish scales –

and then I knew I would never find the words

to say what I wanted to say.

I miss you.

A beautiful thunderstorm

A somewhat soggy tale of about a fifteen minute walk in the rain from downtown to home - told in about four minutes.

Link to YouTube video

Poppy petals - A sentimental reverie

Long ago when the world was younger,

before smart phones and MP3s,

people sang songs and read books.

On one of those days a young woman was wandering in her garden reading a book of poetry.

She paused to pick a few bright red-orange petals from a bed of Flanders poppies and she placed them on the page she had just been reading.

When she looked up, she saw a man approaching.

She closed her book and went to meet her love.

Years later when the children were tucked into their beds,

the woman pulled a book from the shelves in the sitting room to read a few poems.

When she opened the book a few dusky lavender poppy petals fell out onto the floor.

They crumbled in her fingers as she tried to pick them up.

When she looked up, she saw a man standing in the doorway.

She closed her book and went to meet her love.

Just another summer's day

What could be more pointless

than watching summer clouds

drifting across a summer sky?

Or cottonwood fluff?

A Great Blue Heron

flew in from somewhere,

only to land at the edge of a sandbar

that wasn’t there last month.

Clouds had rained rivers

and flood waters had dropped

countless grains of sand.

And cottonwood trees scatter

cottonwood fluff with

careless abandon.

And how is it that

you coming to mind

makes all of this more dear

than I could possibly say?

Swallows over the river

Yesterday I was leaning against the railing of the Kaw River Bridge, just looking at the changing patterns on the surface of the water and watching the ever circling swallows swooping in under the bridge beneath my feet - and then steaking back out again. From the buff colored patch above their tails, I identified them as cliff swallows. I have often seen them dipping and darting around long rows of mud nests one next to the other against the steel girders on the underside of the bridge.

From my sky view, I stood there mesmerized. The winds were light and the muddy current slowing after heavy spring rains. The gray skies and dark trees reflected off of the endlessly undulating ripples, the colors changing with the breeze. The surface of the water dimpled and danced, foreground becoming background, background becoming foreground. Wavy lines dividing dark and light.

Everywhere I looked, the same and not the same.

And right there, from just below my feet, uncountable swallows were looping out, looping back, darting in and up and down and around again. A flicker of wings then long glides, banking and diving, skimming the surface of the water. Swallows flying with abandon, hurtling through thin air at breakneck speed, missing each other without a thought. I would try following a single swallow as it flew closer to the bridge, and then in a blink, it would dodge out of my eyesight.

I quickly realized that I couldn't catch any of this with a camera. I didn't have the equipment either to freeze the motion or to contain the randomness of the scene below me. And even if I could stop the action or video the movement, I knew that I couldn’t capture my sensations. I couldn’t even come close. And I knew just as well, from long experience, that I wouldn't even remember much more than a blur of my afternoon on the bridge after I walked away. So I just watched for awhile. Swallows flying over the river.

But then, after fifteen minutes or so of just being there, I pulled my device camera out of my pocket anyway. With nothing but electrons to lose, I held my camera with careful fingers over the railing and simply clicked the button. Click, click, click, click....

I was aware of the absurdity of my actions, but I wasn't even sure which absurdity was which. I was trying to somehow hold onto something that was simply there for the seeing and trying to catch something more than a camera could ever catch. And the river and the swallows would be there again tomorrow. And next year. And the next.  Water reflects sky. Wind ripples rivers. Swallows fly. The living world is always there, but it never holds itself still for a picture. I knew that I was at best taking a small souvenir of a moment in time.

Later, back at my computer, I deleted one image of muddy water after the next. I had been mostly shooting air. Then I began discarding photos of small dark blotches nearly indistinguishable from small chunks of wood drifting downstream. I deleted and deleted. I framed and cropped. And finally, the photos you see are what remains. Not very much, but something. At least the edge of the bridge was in sharp focus. And the horizon always seems to sort of blur into the distance – in pictures or in reality.

I see things in photographic images that I don’t see in the living world. And so I step back from that world now and then to take some pictures for myself. It’s another way to look. And I am often astonished by what nature photographers can capture with an experienced eye and good equipment. Images I could never see with my naked eyes. Hummingbirds frozen in mid-hover. Every gray frayed feather of a Great Blue Heron, revealed as sharp as glass on my computer screen in an instant as yesterday’s bird flies low over stilled rippling water. A complement to what I know from life.

But these here are my photos. I couldn’t capture the living world. I didn’t expect to. I did manage to retain a kind of afterimage of ripples and swallows.  And out of the corner of my eye, I might have caught a wing and a prayer. But nothing I could prove with a photograph.

**

Grass Clippings

How I think about climate change.

No steadicams were used in the making of this three minute video. And yes, I know I should oil my squeaky lawnmower. But give a listen - to my voice and to the sweet sounds of me cutting my grass.

Life is good. Let's not waste it.

grass clippings: the video

Another look from a drift log - three herons

And then, I found another drift log by the Kaw River to sit on. It was the one the three turtles had been resting on just the other day. I could see about forty feet of smooth, sun-whitened wood, resting on the rocks, but I couldn’t tell how much of the log extended down beneath the  muddy river. I straddled the log as if I might ride it on down into the water.

A heron stood on a rocky point catching the spill that comes through the north unit of the Bowersock hydropower plant. The heron was perhaps seventy-five yards away from me, standing motionless on the other side of a small cove of the river. It gave no sign that it noticed me.

I think of herons standing stoically, just watching the world as it turns – quite imperceptibly from I was sitting. From my log, I watched the heron watching. And then, suddenly, it stabbed its bill into the water and came up with a flash of wriggling silver. So much for stoicism.

For me to imagine what herons think is mostly about what I think. And what I want to think is that things make sense. That there’s a reason among the rhymes. I can perceive patterns all around me, but what do they mean?

For instance, over some time I’ve noticed that herons seem to like to play a kind of game – I might call it ‘King of the river.’ The game tends to be played in a triangular pattern.  It’s probably is just a territorial thing, but from my perspective the game seems nearly pointless – a game played out of idleness.

As I watched, a heron flew in from somewhere across the way and landed near the one that had caught the fish some minutes ago. That one flew up and over to where another heron was standing near the low island in the middle of the river, bumping that one off. Then that heron flew off somewhere. To some other edge of the river.

The herons settle for a while, but, if I sit long enough, eventually a heron will be flying in to take the spot just across from where I am sitting.

Now I can’t tell which heron is which and one edge of the river doesn’t seem significantly different from another to me. But then I don’t think like a heron. And then, maybe this flying around is indeed all just some kind of a game. Something to do while waiting for something to happen.

And then I felt something. It was almost imperceptible. It felt as if the log I was sitting on had moved. A shudder. I wondered if I was imagining it. Maybe it was I that had moved. Shifted. The river was flowing with only a moderate current and the log seemed well anchored on the large limestone rocks of the levee. But something must have moved. I felt something. Or maybe I just imagined it.

I picked up a light stick lying among the rocks nearby and balanced it across the log. Perhaps with this sensitive instrument, my eyes might see the movement that I thought I felt. If it happened again. The light breeze moved the light stick. So much for that idea. I wasn’t  doing much more than playing my own game.

I looked up to see if the herons were still standing where I had seen them last. Time is not quite measurable when you’re just sitting on a log by a moving river. The river flows. Always changing and yet still the same. Heraclitus said that. I’m just repeating it in my own way.

The heron across the small cove waded slowly along the near edge of the point. It was close enough that I could see a dark band across its gray head. And then the heron waded back. It seemed pointless to ask if there was a point to all of this.

And then the log underneath me moved again. Well, maybe it moved. How could I tell? I watched the log. I looked down its length to where the log extended down into the moving water. It would have to take something pretty big bumping into the end of the log for me to feel it. And then I felt the log shudder again.

Do herons expect two plus two to equal four? Do they think that there a cause for every effect? And then, why should I care if the log moved or didn’t move under me?  Not that I cared very much. As I have said, the movement was nearly imperceptible. But still, I sort of wanted an answer.  A reason among the randomness.

Wondering about things is a very human game to play.

I looked up to see if the herons were about to trade places again.

As if it mattered.

**

 Photos of the Kaw River for comparison:

May 9 - The Kaw River flowing at about 46,000 cubic feet/second.

In the photo at the top, taken a few weeks earlier, about 7,000 cfs.

The Kaw - same river - running 10 feet higher.

This drift log and the one nearby that I was sitting on in this story are long gone.
 
The herons stood watching on that point just across the way.