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The Six Things a River Might Say, If It Were to Speak

There is no such thing as a river.
The word you call me is simply a place where waters pass.
I am no more a thing unto itself than is ocean, air, you.

When a swallow dips its beak for a drink,
The sky bends down to kiss my surface
and this moment is reflected, like a tale told twice in
joy, wrinkling the clouds face.

All rivers are not metaphors, nor similes;
forget what you have heard: I am life
and what living thing doesnt become something new
as it empties into the ocean to weep salt?

If not fate, or some magnanimous hand,
what made the waters that you bend down to touch?
Did the waters make themselves? Did the salmon
return to their ancestral beds by accident?

All words about rivers ultimately fail us:
listen to the sounds of the water passing over the rocky bottom in the rills;
isnt that the word that spoke us all into being?

In the end, you come to me for the same reason the salmon do:
God tips you back into yourself when you seek Him.
Anyone who leans too far out over the water to see
himself must finally fall through into the depths for an answer.

David Holper,
from his recently published first book of poetry
64 Questions. Holper is a College of the Redwoods English professor.