31/60: falling away (Published in Young Ravens)

It is late fall in the world.
We dangle our legs off the dock above a river somewhere.

The water is doing its moving/not moving thing 

of being here and on its way elsewhere.

Everything but the river and the dock begins to fade away:
first the things behind us become like smoke
because we are not holding them in place with our gaze,
then the trees on the far bank become hazy,
and even as they drift downriver like vapor
we look skyward and see that the blue has dissolved
leaving a starry blackness.

We are now flowing through the universe,
powered by the river's gentle current.

You lay back, feeling the wood through your t-shirt
against your shoulder blades,
and you begin to count the stars.

I look down river to where we have been -
it seems impossible to look up river
as that would be to know something before it happened,
which of course
is not possible.


see in Young Ravens