Genealogy

This stream took a shorter course— a thread of water that makes oasis out of mud, in pooling, does not aspire to lake. To river, leave the forest, the clamorous wild. I cannot. Wherever I am, I am here, nonsensical, rhapsodic, stock-still as the trees. Trickling never floods, furrows its meager path through the forest floor. There will always be a root too thirsty, moss that only swallows and spreads. Primordial home, I am dying from love of you. Were I tuber or quillwort, the last layer of leaves that starts the dirt or the meekest pond, I would absorb everything. I would drown. Water makes song of erratic forms, and I hear the living push back branches, wander off trail.