sojourn

we choose our name's each day anew.
our thin-skinned names, our
transient names and we call
to each other.
how will he call me?
will he? and my answer?
i will answer --
honoring the voice
if not the word.

we walk beside the river,
he and i, toward a horizon.
there, it pours itself
up into heaven and heaven
spills back through its veins.
walking for a long time
til we need time
no longer. sometimes, he moves like
a pawn beside me -- slowed by silence
and limits and private rhythms. sometimes,
he moves as if slipped off my side,
like an unmoored lifeboat riding
a surge towards a shore of willows or ferns
- several paces from me.
he always returns
-- a dove with a branch.
the river and i,
his starboard.

he is casual at the rim where
the water falls
away from
the earth. the end of
the world. the beginning of all
myth's which lack logic's gravity.
on the edge, he stands relaxed
and easy and free
from vertigo.

There's a crossing, a point
where the river floods out a road.
we hardly notice, having chosen
the water's purpose as our own.
the tire-worn path,
just a useless artifact.
it means nothing to us.

a decision was made
... or many more than one.
we made them privately,
without discussion
-- silent, wise and human
and riddled with a sense of
what's honestly needed
even when that seems to be nothing.

it is pressing -- press-pulling us
loosely towards Forward, over
washed-out roads we
never needed anyway.
listen, listen, we are
listening, for the secret
behind language, listening,
for a rich and fertile absence.
a place to rest
beyond the urgent calling
-- where i have answered,
always, already.