Playing to the River

She stands by the riverbank, notes from her bagpipes lapping across to us as we wait for the traffic light to change. She does not know we hear— she is playing to the river, a song for the water, the flow of an unknown melody to the rocky bluffs beyond, for the mist that was this morning, shroud of past lives: fishermen and riverboat gamblers, tugboat captains and log raftsmen, pioneer and native slipping through the eddies of time. She plays for them all, both dirge and surging hymn, for what has passed and is passing as we slip into the currents of traffic, the changed light bearing us away.