The light between three and four in the afternoon
is so intense
that it makes the mesh on the screen door disappear
in haze.
Every sound is precise
and distant
like the voices of rowers across water,
and you know that, that slap of a broom
against a dusty rug,
and the oarsome creak the rocker makes
on the back porch floor,
and the voice your neighbor uses
to call in her boy for a bath and then supper,
will be engraved in your memory forever.
It would be a small town like any other
declining into disuse,
except for the river.
The river doesn’t alter
the way dust filters dreamily through boarded windows,
or the way children piece together
cryptic slogans of fading billboards.
The river doesn’t change the rain’s ten-thousandth imprint
on the roughened wood of windward facing sills,
but its influence cannot be separated
from the habits of those who belong there,
any more than light
can be gathered from the branch-formed rill.
Those who have lived long there,
who are fortunate enough to say good-bye
by giving time to the pattern
of fireflies at nightfall
and tribute to the iridescence of kingfishers,
watch whatever shame living has encumbered them with
drop away
like a hollow log floating down river.
They know that, ultimately, nothing
is irredeemable,
no pattern lost
that does not emerge again.
And this is the river’s gift
they give their grandchildren
along with memories
of church bazaars and barn dances,
of evening’s fall on scythed fields,
roughened hands and clothes mended,
of what it means to endure.
What is important, remains.
What matters is that the children’s parents
and the grandparents’ children, still
take their lunches down by the river,
still leave their offices
to walk with rolled-up sleeves
where willow branches trail
into reflection.
