Swimming though green,
it’s dark in the woods
more like dusk than dawn.
The stream has been dry for weeks,
the one that feeds the little waterfall,
its headwaters in the swamp where the skunk cabbage grows.
Now water crashes over the rocks and threatens the leggy plants that too quickly sprouted while it was dry.
There is the feeling of plenty. Of life rushing forward.
I stand in the stream,
water filling my boots.
Memories of when I was young, walking barefoot up a stream and discovering a waterfall, one that everyone knew about, but me.
The memory lodges in my heart
like a leaf caught in an eddy
a branch causing a dam.
It isn’t a sad memory, yet I feel sadness.
Maybe it’s the loss of youth,
the loss
of that feeling
of a lifetime ahead of me.
My tears become one with the rain,
I let the memory tumble away
let it drown in the rushing water.
