it’s always the same

cross a ditch
a tangle of sticks and broken reeds
to a low sun tossed back
where a river unravels
in a smell of silt and a scatter of wing-tips

wells up where its channel runs deep
riffles over pebbles
spins in slow eddies inscrutable as mud

take off your boots wade into a coolness
hold midstream on a tufted shoal
cut by a recent storm

in the breeze hangs a worm on a filament of light
where it adheres cannot be seen

this is your fate: follow any path to its end
you will not be anywhere
everything you learn
will be forgotten and learned again

you have discovered another river
the grandest yet but it is not
the rio grande and in this dust
you aren’t the first or last to stand

someone on the riverbank has left a pair of boots
pull them on roll down
the edges of your trousers
cast to the water
a handful of grass pulled up by the roots
and reckon a new way home

---