Inscrutable Twist

The twist of the stream was inscrutable. It was a seemingly run-of-the-mill stream that flowed for several miles by the side of Route 302 in northern Vermont— and presumably does still—but I’ve not been back there for what seems like a long time. I have it in my mind’s eye, the way one crested a rise and rounded a corner on the narrow blacktop, going west, and saw off to the left in the flat green meadow the stream turning briefly back on itself to form a perfect loop—a useless light-filled water noose or fragment of moon’s cursive, a sign or message of some kind—but left behind.