What the River Carries

The river does not keep what it is given. A leaf turns twice in the eddy and is taken, the way a name slips from the tongue mid-sentence, already somewhere else.

I watched a heron stand so still it became the hour itself— gray and patient, bent over its own reflection as if reading something written there.

Beneath the bridge the water carries its cargo of light, broken glass of afternoon rearranging on the stones. Nothing is lost. Nothing stays.

My grandmother said the river remembers every hand that ever touched it, but I think it is the hands that do the remembering,

cold and bright long after, holding the shape of current, the ache of moving water that will not be held.