ESTUARY

Here, you seek solace, gliding in your vessel, sinew pulling skins taut over its cedar skeleton, the quickest blade slicing still water. Spear-fishing the silver current, your spine perpendicular to the cloudless sky. With the longest strokes, you surge into the river’s mouth. For this, you know, there is no song.

 

Here, you coax the heat of your body into this cool water, and soon after, how salt crystallizes upon your shoulders. This quiet portent, slick, translucent sea kelp, patient buoys spilling tadpoles from their ruptured pods.

 

Here, you came on foot once, when you were a girl, weighted, breathing arid winds for days. Trudging through wild grasses and sage, whiptails scurrying about your ankles. You shivered in the cool night air until the glimmering and gleaming of water catching sun returned light to your lungs. Your hummingbird winged heart, and still such silence. Stepping upon the salt-lined shore, how the breeze tickled your face and hair. You scattered your father’s ashes, dissipated his words. Some say you bathed in your father’s ashes. Some say you breathed in his very words.

 

Here, no dragonflies accompany you, only the lean sound of you breaking the water’s surface. This one song which only your body could compose.