A few years ago a friend went through some depressing times. She tried to talk to me about her situation but always became tongue-tied and frustrated that she was unable to describe it. So I encouraged her to write what she was feeling. Her attempts to articulate what she was going through resulted in many essays, and one poem. Here is the poem:
(And for those amateur psychologists out there - the "friend" is not an oblique reference to myself!!)
The River
The river makes me smile, it makes me happy and calm
it flows and winds and talks to me.
Nothing in the world can be better than the cool fresh breath of mountain air blowing over my body high on a bridge above the water...
and then I watch, just slowly creeping around the bend is a misty fog.
It is coming for me and it passes over me softly. Talking to me as it passes all the furrowed lines upon my brow...
The smell of trees and whitewater and earth...it's like medicine. But they dont try and they ask nothing of me - they just are....existing forever in every form imaginable.
Can't help but give in to it. It will be ok, as long as I stay here..but at that moment the fog - which came partially from the river - gets thick and the cold seeps in.
It knows what I want and turns me away...but not just yet..
The river jumps and swirls sending me back to the other place - where? Where I am supposed to be, I guess. I listen. It knows. Suddenly I know, too. And I go away.
But somehow driving slowly away, I hear it still, tilling my mind over and over.
I'll be back, I think...I'll always be here, it says.
-- J.S.
May 2003
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