The River
The RiverThe river runs in memories always past sandstone palisades in mind-melting August and under jagged fingers of ice in the white-toed months. Centuries ago Indians bent hickory saplings to point at places we never found. The river, too, bowed cottonwoods toward mid-channel, and on those branches hunched miserable raccoons. Eagles and ospreys guarded their nests on high ledges, hissing and circling when we climbed close, and clams slept in deep, stinking mud below slow, sleeping current. Possums swooned before us, and whitetails made their sharp hooves c***k on the rocks like rifle shots in the low, still valley. Nettles stung us on the trail of a thousand years. In gullies and on hogbacks we ran, and on cliffsides we swarmed, clinging to handholds carved by mound builders
