On the River 

for Jerry

By Peter Anderson

I heard about it all, on the way to the river.

You had taken a pass on all the gadgets 

that might win you a few more days to breathe. 

In your own voiceless way, you told them

to keep it real and take you home.

 

That night, while the summer meteors flashed

across the Milky Way, I held you in a prayer,

without purpose or destination perhaps, other than 

the moment it made. Clear. Your eyes. Like the deep 

trout-finning pools of the river below camp.

 

Next morning, I forgot about you. You know how 

it is, Navahos call it shonto—light playing on water. 

You paddle through it, mesmerized, something rises

in you like a rainbow in the eddy, and you shimmer, 

happy as a mating dragonfly.

 

We camped above the big rapid that night, the one 

we feared the most. I was listening to the crickets—

those that drone and those that chant—when 

a screech owl flew out of its own silhouette and 

took its shadow downstream.

 

By then you were at home, maybe in a bed beside 

the window, looking  out onto the mountain whose 

winds you’d sailed. Below our camp, the owl 

perched above that glassy slant of current 

at the head of every rapid. . . the tongue

that says “over here,” and glides you

 

out toward the ledge where 

       the river disappears.