the Okaw . . .

Is there a way to be gone and still

belong?  Travel that takes you home?

Is that life? - to stand by a river and go.

     William Stafford, "Quo Vadis"

Often and most places one comes to, especially

Alone, there are points of perspective that keep

Each landscape from drifting into nothing but

Its distance, the fixed foregrounds of tree lines

And field fences, weathered barns and stone

Chimneys, the road that no matter how far you

Have come brings you to the present moment,

But by this little stream not yet swollen with spring

I come sixty years ago to the river almost in flood,

Down the one-lane rutted road through the woods

To the steep banks, the water so thick with mud

It might mostly have been the earth broken and

Scattered behind a plow in the corn field I passed,

And half in and half out of the suck and swirl

Of water the better part of a tree trunk, lifting

And settling, rolling a little in the shallow shore

Current, shifting and sliding and then turning

It's whole body into the  deepest part of the river,

Still gathering every thing into our long passage

Through all these years of our going and staying.