MY FATHER LOVED TO WALK IN RIVERS
BCW 2 July 2012 V3
My father loved to walk in rivers
In kills,
In burns,
In streams and their
many branches.
He loved to crawl on his belly
Up to Litchfield farm meadow brooks
Spying out the Brookies ,
Alert but lazing outside the current behind a boulder,
Expecting
Something other than his lure.
He took me to the waterside and walked me in.
Showed me places to leave the car and slip down,
Beside the bridge,
To the shady verdant banks
Beside lakes and riffles.
And I, I find him by rivers
Though his ashes drift in the great Atlantic,
His carbon becoming parts of so many beings.
My Father loved to walk in rivers,
The current pressing on his thighs, eyes watching
Well, everything -
Patiently watching the morning's heat warm the gravel where nymphs
of amazing soon to be damselflies wait for their cold blood to stir,
Them then to swim up to the surface film one last time
The hatches of micro-fauna, cracking their carapaces,
Shouldering out, pumping up,
then
Drying their wings before flying,
Never to swim again, except in dying.
The flashing curving fish rising to grab Mayflies
Who'd hoped to launch into the last day of their life this time,
But dreamt of different ends.
Watching the way the cobbles and banks shaped the flow of all the
life that washed
Into this stream, this day.
I love to walk in rivers,
I find US there
All of us,
My great grandfather
Who threw pebbles at Dad's childhood bedroom window before dawn
And eloped him by ladder,
To catch the morning rises.
Uncle Steve, his baby brother
Who could feel the fish,
In any water, fresh or salt,
And fill platters with summer dinners among cousins
My sons, Noah and Ian,
Marveling at his woods lore
His knowing of how rivers run,
Of who lay where in which riffles.
Then them walking into the river,
Tentative at first, watching
Well, everything.
I've never stepped in the same stream twice,
Yet on every strand, every bank, sandbar and in many headwaters,
I love to walk in these great
rivers
Among our all our ancestors and all of our descendants
