The Return

The swans are asleep upon the river.  Their long, snowy white and slender necks curve gracefully down upon their bodies.  Their black masked eyes are closed; their heads reposed within the curves of their strong majestic wings.  Not just one, but many sleep upon the water, mounds of white glacial ice upon the drab brown and wet black of the river.

They do not drift with the current they remain stationary.  I wonder as I stand upon the shore if they ever really sleep – if they have ever rested - truly.  With their eyes closed, their strong bodies elongated in sleep how do they remain stationary?  How do they really sleep, how do any of us really rest? 

It’s cold upon the shore.  The rain has stopped but the west wind drives a fine mist into my face and hair.  My fingers feel stiff and my skin tight around my ankles.  I must move, I must keep moving so that I too may remain stationary.  I smile and feel my lips crack in the cold air.  I find myself laughing as I assimilate myself with the strong white animal upon the river.  Madness. And my laughter produces no sound and I do not move.  My legs feel pegged upon the ground.  I try to wiggle my toes within the wide wet canvas of my laced shoes and feel disjointed movement that does not belong to me. 

How long?  How long will I stand here? I don’t know, perhaps just long enough and at last long enough. 

The west wind picks up and whispers in my ear.  Quiet and serene.  Look here, look and feel how cold the wind is, why stay, it says to me.  Move on so that you can rest and warm yourself.  But I won’t.  I have moved on long enough.

I have returned to the source.  I have come back and will not leave now.

I feel the warm wet upon my face and understand once I taste the sting of salt upon my lips - tears.  I pull in the cold sharp air and try to regain my composure but my efforts only strengthen my sobs. 

I have come back to the river. 

I have come back to the river and have discovered it as I have left it; a miracle.  A strong miracle of absent emotion.  No living thing requires that it change its course.  The swan, snowy white, dressed for continual mourning has taken on the river’s decadent two dimensional existence.  Paid mourners who never really sleep, never really take rest.  The river won’t let them.  That is the price they pay.  They are like the pathetic rich, who give so much of their own defined beauty, who maintain their distance and believe that their existence is a sparkling reality while they too swim in drab brown and black wet.  Nothing touches their whiteness because there is not enough care for spite to exist on the river. 

Pathetic, this moving roiling thing that slips and slides deeper into the earth, always moving never resting, constantly deceiving.  I have told my daughters, never trust that which cannot stand still.

So I keep standing and again my lips smile and I allow my cold slab of a body to shiver, to feel the west wind cold.  At least the wind takes heed.  At least the wind, like King Solemn, would take the time to slice me in two for good and evil to share.

But the good is not here, on the shore of this damned river and evil succumbs, as it always does, to its child, fear – evil fears this inconsequential existence and steers clear.

I lift my gaze from the water and its mesmerizing current.  I look upon the tops of trees, no leaves and soaked with rain.  The sky  - the gray of early March.  The tree tops sway in an un-urgent way.  There is dismay in the swaying back and forth of the long and slender branches, as the west wind whispers in again with yet another wave of cold misty rain.  Gray sky, distinguishing an astonishing array of bare wet tree branches in tones of black detail, against the horizon. 

During the summer, I had more strength to stomach this deception; the green of the trees and the grass hide the dismaying river into a picture of righteousness.  Just as Christ covers man’s sins the mantel of spring and summer covers the flowing absence of regret.  The pink mallow of spring softens the course, the deep grass leans in and allows the slender hand of ripple to send out soft sounds of song.  Even I, at the grass’s beckoning have leaned over and let the water move over my hands.  I moved my more slender fingers then, back and forth just beneath the surface and allowed the sun to show me that its rays could cut the surface softly and sparkle the water briefly, changing the rivers face as youth hides the old age within.  This I showed my son whose inner light could not illuminate the depths of the river’s coarse and darkly hidden ways.

But March - March is an honest month.  Unlike its winter companions who cover the river, March lays the river bare and tells the truth of its inability to feel and all of nature surrenders, except the swans who insist on their pretext of beauty.  But in March the west wind, sympathetic, yet cold will nod with the trees and all the dead grass and leaves moan up from the ground and agree with me – not one ounce of sympathy, emotion, regret courses though all that wet.

And now, now that what’s left of the good that remained in my life, what insisted on my remaining is now gone, I come and face my foe.

Fear shivers through my body and I resist the warm urge to pee. 

River, not for spite, not for loneliness nor love do I join you here but for me and the soft cry of a voice long muted do I come.  I look upon March’s nature and feel a surge of hope in my heart.  What has this earth lost?  Deepening roots gripped the earth deep down as I placed my son beneath weeping trees and silent grass and now long branches lift up in a shout of triumphant despondency as I move plank stiff toward the swirling wet of lifelessness.

Sandra K Woodiwiss © 2012

From Never Cry 2012