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What's Under A River
Hundreds of stones.
Under the stones, what's left of
centuries:
sand, silt, the bones of spawned salmon
and old steelhead
- calcium leaching into the water -
and under the shadows of bone: a carved
bed,
indigenous rock
opening and softening
but so slowly no one can hear it.
Under the stolid rock is motion again,
the migration
of ghosts, nations moving, hauling their
minerals,
smoke and imagination -
and deeper,
farther,
under it all:
love, resting -
and diamonds, burning.
What I love most
is the way you turn your head
toward what you hear,
cocking it slightly down,
looking up under your lashes.
That quality of attention
is what I love, the moment
when you forget yourself,
place your own thoughts
aside, deliberately
and immediately, and let in
the other, the mystery,
whatever it is: a goldfinch
in early morning, singing;
somebody's single engine plane
sounding its notes unseen
behind a windbreak of cedars;
the soft plush of air that lifts
a pair of dragonflies
wheeling past your tea cup,
quivering bluer than water or sky.
Your ear is tuned to the world
and its tenuous frequencies,
nothing is too fragile for you,
nothing too worn. Even my lips,
chapped with winter: when they open
you dip your head to listen.
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