Sketching the Klamath in December 

The River is now a great bridge
The one constant that stretches morning
Across the entire day
Folding it neatly
Gently
Back into night...

In between, freshly poured green water
Water of life,
Calling water
Water that hides things
And
rarely reveals them.

Even the rocks revel in their newfound tones
Shouldering their neighbors with the latest
Deepest
Hue of translucent
stained
Distant
blue.

Born of morning,
All the shadowed boxes,
Eddys,
Dark watching spots,
curiously,
Slowly,
Lengthen day's best work,
In their icy stillness.

Dinner is jars of old elderberries,
And struggling greens, lost
Between the miseries of heat
And bugs and thirst,
While seeing the path ahead,
Pitted, dense,
Still tough..
To where winter will set their stride.

Cravings of sweets
in the soft, cloying dampness.
Chilled, but
cleansing.
All this:
From vistas of feet
on velvet landscapes,
To the endless jostlings
Across this great bridge.

Sam A. Flanagan