Trajectory at the End of Winter

            Back from a walk along the Big Wood River in early May 

I am the river alive with spring run-off 
one moment rushing to be where the calling calls, 
the next a pool reflecting or an eddy at play. 
Cascades of findings secret me over the stones 

and fling me swirling the light out from clouds. 
I inch up banks and slosh into marshes, tease 
grasses to question their colors, seep into roots 
for sap to carry and wave at the sun. The straw of 

last year’s mulch softens in silence, 
the crunch of winter pulled into the earth. 
Over the bedrock of seventy, nudging the sides 
of what I believe, I flow, no obstacle not to be 

wrapped around, passed, part of my laughing, coming,
sobbing, exulting. On and on I caress what is there 
my aim as certain as the child from and then 
into the woman I still am becoming. 

Or the live force that will welcome her home.