Validity

While floating on the Main Salmon River between Jim Moore Place and Buckskin Bill’s, I wrote this poem slowly in my head, waiting for the river and landscape to whisper to me.

Corn Creek, Idaho is the put-in for the perfect river trip: Main Salmon, which is the ancestral homelands of the Nimiipuu (commonly known as Nez Perce).

The validity of river
is only a question of time
and time has nothing but river
to soothe its wily mind.

Sticks and stones of yonder
whisper secrets to the green
of pearly waves and cloud-splashed daze
exempt of enemies.

Mossy rocks and bald eagle tops
envelop above and below
abandoning memories
of jagged crystal snow.

The rhythm of the loons
is subtly detected
by pine tree graves
and granite caves
bathed in stupor
of silence neglected.

A hawk perches as sentinel
on spindly bark
encouraging dragonflies to
take flight,
that winged gossamer art.

The triumph of slope
stands in regalia
until crumbles
become
sands
of river truth.