Where Water
Comes Together With Other Water
I love creeks and the
music they make.
And rills, in glades
and meadows, before
they have a chance to
become creeks.
I may even love them
best of all
for their
secrecy. I almost forgot
to say something about
the source!
Can anything be more
wonderful than a spring?
But the big streams
have my heart too.
And the places streams
flow into rivers.
The open mouths of
rivers where they join the sea.
The places where water
comes together
with other water. Those places stand out
in my mind like holy
places.
But these coastal
rivers!
I love them the way
some men love horses
Or glamorous
women. I have a thing
for this cold swift
water.
Just looking at it
makes my blood run
and my skin
tingle. I could sit
and watch these rivers
for hours.
Not one of them like
any other.
I’m 45 years old
today.
Would anyone believe
it if I said
I was once 35?
My heart empty and
sere at 35!
Five more years had to
pass
before it began to
flow again
I’ll take all the time
I please this afternoon
before leaving my
place alongside this river.
It pleases me, loving
rivers.
Raymond Carver
***
Windchime
She goes out to hang
the windchime
in her nightie and
her work boots.
It’s six-thirty in
the morning
and she’s standing on
the plastic ice chest
tiptoe to reach the
crossbeam of the porch,
windchime in her left
hand,
hammer in her right,
the nail
gripped tight between
her teeth
but nothing happens
next because
she’s trying to
figure out
how to switch #1 with
#3.
She must have been
standing in the kitchen,
coffee in her hand,
asleep,
when she heard it—the
wind blowing
through the sound the
windchime
wasn’t making
because it wasn’t
there.
No one, including me,
especially anymore believes
till death do us
part,
but I can see what I
would miss in leaving—
the way her ankles go
into the work boots
as she stands upon
the ice chest;
the problem scrunched
into her forehead;
the little kissable
mouth
with the nail in it.
Tony Hoagland
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