The River

The River

The River

There is a radiance inside the winter woods
                    That calls each soul by name:
Wind in young boughs, trees shaking off thick coats of snow,

The rattle of frozen rain on a barn roof: all these
                    Will help you lose your way
And find a silence older than the sky

That makes our being here a murmur only,
                    That makes me walk along the river
Beyond where it has flooded itself

While freezing over, past these dead firs,
                    The great assembly of cedars,
So that I must say, I do not know why I am here,

And move around in those few words
                    And feel their many needles
Upon my lips and warm them on my tongue

Though I say nothing, for it is a calm
                    Beyond the calm I know
That wants to talk now, after all these years

Of hearing me say spruce, wind, cloud and face,
                    Not knowing the first thing about them all,
Not knowing the simplest thing,

That every word said well is praise:
                    And someone deep inside me wants to say
I am not lost but there are many paths!

While someone else will whisper back,
                    So you are on the longest quest of all,
The quest for home, and not appear

Though I have walked along the river now
                    These good five miles
While letting wind push me a little way

And letting thoughts grow slow and weak
                    Before I feed them words, for what
Is told to me this afternoon

Is simply river , with each Iand itdissolved,
                    A cold truth but a truth indeed
Held tight on the way back

Past curves and forks, as evening takes hold,
                    A strange light all the way
That falls between the words that I would use

When talking of this strangeness or this light
                    So that I speak in small, slow breaths
Of evening, cedar, cone and ice

In words that stick to skin –