River

Bones

There are hollowed dry bones littered through the house I step on barefoot in the dark.

It rained last week, real rain in August, battering the grape leaves and splitting tomato skins. It reached 100 degrees this week. Yesterday there was morning thunder, more rain, and a 6.3 earthquake off the southern coast of Oregon. I walked Mercy down to the park to sweat tears in the steaming field when the cloud cover lifted and the sun came out. I didn’t feel the earthquake although I woke suddenly and got out of bed. I stepped on a bone.

Cagibi published my postcard from the Upper Truckee River this week. I forgot it was coming out so pleased to see it up. I finished the same stubborn essay again, enough to submit. Finishing is the trick. True enough that works of art are never finished, only abandoned. Submitted. Rejected. Revised. I reach the limits of my senses at a certain point. As though born unable to hear, yet aware there is a realm of music beyond my comprehension I scan for but can never translate. I know it’s out there. The challenging is finishing.

Max and Faten are building a cabin on the Calapooia river up the valley. The river was named for the original local tribe, the Kalapuya, a rocky trout run that slides down the Cascades to join the Willamette. Fish skate the granite and quartz rocks and dart away.

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.”

–Norman Maclean