Low Water

In August the river confesses.
It lowers its voice to a whisper
and shows you the bones of its bed—
the gray stones it has carried
since the mountains shrugged them loose,
the sunken log that has become
a slow hotel for small dark things.

The current, which in April
could knock a grown man sideways,
now steps aside politely
to let you cross in sneakers.
You do not get wet above the ankle.
You feel like an intruder
in a room where someone is sleeping.

What the Stones Say

Each stone is a sentence
the river has been writing
for a thousand years
and has not yet finished.
Run your thumb along the grain.
This is patience you can hold.
This is what it looks like
when water takes its time.

In September the rain will return
and the river will rise
and cover all of this again,
and the stones will go back
to being a rumor, a darkness
under moving silver.
But they will still be there.
They are always still there.

This is the lesson of low water:
that the river is not only
what you see moving.
It is also what waits beneath,
holding its breath,
patient as a stone,
until the season turns
and the voice comes back.