Tag: hope

This is a color photograph I took standing out on a rock below a riffle yesterday.

Mercy and I went down to the river yesterday morning between storms. The dog hates the wind and hides under the bed, but doesn’t mind rain. I scan as we walk beneath the firs for a hefty stick she can retrieve as we walk down to the water, scouting along the trail for a branch as big as my forearm, still a bit green, but not waterlogged or decaying. If the stick sinks, she’ll dive after it, and I don’t want that now, not now with fall coming and the river rising. The current is coming swift.

Tiny honey locust leaves rain down, a flock of sparrows shot on the wing and stick to the soles of my boots, lodge in the bandanna around my neck. Leaves and stems shore up in drifts against the back door when we come home again and go inside to towel off. A tempo change.

Games of chance.

It’s what I think of, as we walk: rolling the bones, picking a card, spinning the wheel. My right palm itches. I wonder if it’s the first twinge barely perceptible of shifting fortune, some red flickering light suggesting an exit door from this gray cadaverous casino, or whether I’m weary, as we are all weary, and deceiving myself. Either jump in volcano or keep trudging through the ash. Leave the table or double down? There is something in the wind.