Cartography of Slow Rivers

At the bend, the river keeps a library of silt, soft spines of mud shelved under willow shade, each flood a page turned with wet fingers, letters pressed from reed and rust.

Fishermen walk the margin like careful readers, their boots whispering over glassy stones; the current edits their reflections, crosses out the sky, rewrites it in green.

A kingfisher stitches blue through the air, a quick needle that closes the seam of noon; somewhere downstream, a bridge hums low, its iron ribs an old choir of rain.

By dusk the water gathers its maps, folds light into a slow, creasing atlas; we stand on the bank and are briefly named, as if the river could pronounce us home.