Traveling past deadfall hickory
and cypress knees, past the
pearly eggs of apple snails
beaded onto pickerelweed, the
metallic lace golden orb spiders
had strung between us and the sky,
we paddled where the river
took us, easy bending
passage through a wilderness
that gave way only enough
for us to keep moving, unsure
where we’d come ashore
or turn back to pull upstream
and home. Oh, but it was
peaceful, riding like flotsam
on the current, silently
scaring off the gator,
buzzard and hawk that
knew us even in
our gentleness as danger.
One glistening anhinga
noticed us so late it
stood frozen on a snag,
our plastic hulls nosing up
so close we felt at last harmless.
Cool amber dark moving element,
musk of peat, silt and root gnarl
suspended in its tannin tea —
why should I feel at home
in its tireless flowing, as if I’d
never left the amnion where
spirit first meets flesh, as if
I could remember what
lies ahead when the
molecules disperse to seed
the sea. On the river
not knowing what’s ahead
is what moves us forward —
one more oxbow, we think,
stroking our blades into
resinous riffle and pool, all
the while knowing
we’ll never be more
complete than this, never
appetite more quiet than
gliding through the
sword-shadow of sabal
palm and saw palmetto.
—after Elizabeth Bishop