18

12 Aug 2025

Dark valleys of water where the lights flicker around

Sort of push themselves to the bridge mast

The white specks of glitter flash like paparazzi because this is something important

Beneath the sun or in the shade she doesn’t mind because she is something important

The further along the river you look the water skaters start to disappear and the thin ribbons of water look like acetylcholine flowing somewhere important.

And the call tower in the distance looks smaller and the river is vast. And its dark valleys where the light flickers around form into a green strip.

No one really comes here. Do people dream of this river?

Do the skaters wish to swim here forever like the wind wants to push.

Is there such a need.

Maybe the river is the sand with its blue and orange and beige and every grain is part of a small solar system where the ants jump from planet to planet and maybe a leaf plant is a sun. Maybe that’s important too.

Why don’t we stare at the small dunes that glitter like satin when wet and sheen like corduroy on the land.

Do people dream of this sand? Do ants scuttle in hurry lest they let their beach go?

I don’t know much about the dead trees that lurch up from Da Vinci’s dam but the wood’s design scares me

The small holes and long fractures, the still streams petrified on its pale body.

I suppose it’s dead after all.

And so is the river and the sand and the bridge masts and the light and its sun.

The same sun that lights however many million rivers and sands and bridge masts and dead things I like to look at.

When the world stops it will be just as dead as the water.

Nothing is really ever all that much.

I take off my boots and my feet bury into the sand under the shade.

I take off my clothes and submerge my body into the river.

I feel the chill wash over my weary skin

And, with the water skaters on the surface, I swim.