Mountain River Reflections
Variations of this post were published in the Yancey Journal and Common Times, and
in the Asheville, Hendersonville, and Weaverville Tribune newspapers –Quilla
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
From my nature journal: In the “Dog-Day” afternoon heat I stop to eat a sandwich and drink cold tea under a large willow tree leaning out over the wide mountain river. Further downstream, a thunderhead builds dark towers over the deep gorge, mumbling promises of rain later in the evening. The hot trees rattle and sing with cicadas.
Below the flickering shade of the large willow, the ancient body of green-brown water flows slowly by, these warmest days of the mountain year. This is a good place to get out of the heat, to slow down and enjoy the wide stream’s languid summer rhythms. The long loose limbs of the willow sway and whisper softly, a slight breeze blowing upriver from the approaching thunderstorm.
As I walk about, a young family of wild Mallards quacks and scuttles away from the tall grass and splashes into the river. Big snapping turtles lurk in the warm turbid water, ready to grab the ducklings from below.
Out in the brightly sparkling river a dozen or so Canada geese chatter and drift slowly like lazy vacationers floating on inner tubes. Downstream where the water rushes faster over rocky shoals, a Great Blue Heron is perched on a fallen snag, waiting to spear small fish that swim within reach of his coiled neck and long fast beak. Everything has its necessary place. Life lives on life.
Along with the wildlife that gathers in and along streams I also enjoy rivers for their flowing sense of timelessness. Innumerable water molecules endlessly gather from all over the globe, constantly mingling and cycling the world’s waters. Earth’s stormy skies forever replenish the earth’s surface with moisture flowing down the slopes into the same river channels worn and weathered for millennia, carrying the water back down into the sea again.
The land itself, its forests and fields, roads, bridges and buildings all are constantly changing as generations of men and women come and go. Only rivers, with all their volatility of raging floods and tumbled boulders, remain essentially the same, flowing in the same place down through lost centuries.
Large catfish sleep and feed at the bottoms of the deeper river pools. Gazing into the mesmerizing flow of water steady as the river of time itself, I remember my mother’s part-Cherokee father, gone sixty years now, who loved to fish at night by lantern, a low fire and a big cast iron skillet on the banks of rivers. I like to think that night-fishing for him wasn’t as much about catching big catfish, as it was about getting out of the house, savoring long solitudes beside the living mystery of dark moving water, wondering at the way future keeps flowing into past, listening to the wild and beautiful music of the mountain night.
*
*
*
*
*
–Quilla
The River in Early Spring
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
I take a last bite from the big tart Macintosh, and toss the white core into the dark river. It floats away, bobbing toward the Gulf of Mexico. I’m sitting beside a wild stretch of the wide, north-flowing stream the Europeans called the ‘French Broad’ a couple of centuries ago—such a short time in the enduring life of a river. Except for the railway and the river road, this steep-sided wooded gorge has changed little in thousands of years. I enjoy thinking of the river in these transcendent terms, imagining when the timeless waters flowed clean, without trash, where native peoples fished, and stalked abundant wild game along its rocky ledges and timbered shores. Part of the Cherokee wisdom tradition includes just sitting by the river, listening to its wild and peaceful voices.
This day is radiant with hazy warming sun, but cool breezes rattle the naked trees. A family of Chickadees chatters in the branches of the birches. Several Canada Geese come honking upriver, flying fast and low over the late-winter rapids. A large hornet’s nest dangles and dances in the wind, hanging from a high sycamore limb, sixty feet above the rushing waters.
The turbulent airs of March carry both January and June, a volatile mix of invisible currents falling from the arctic, swirling up from the tropics. The high climbing sun feels warm and welcome on my wintered face; the next minute an icy gust blown down from Ontario reaches chilled fingers under spring clothes. I put the heavy coat back on and hunker down against the south side of an old leaning birch and continue scribbling impressions in my notebook.
The grey woods glow with the soft rose-light of Red Maples in spring bloom. Across the rocking waters, forest hollows echo the staccatos of a woodpecker drumming wooden mating songs. He makes a dead tree knock and ring like a primitive xylophone (literally “wood sounds”). Another long cold blast races up the river and riffles the surface white, like frenzies of feeding fish. The sharp air still bites with teeth of northern ice.
As much as we’d like the fickle spring to be consistently finally with us, winter can be slow to leave the mountains. Several years ago five inches of snow fell in a couple of hours one Thursday afternoon, the tenth of April. Daffodils in full bloom were broken and buried under thick feathers of wet snow. The streets were absolute mayhem with people trying desperately to get home.
The afternoon sun shines on the steep walls of the river cliffs. Hidden deep in those high ledges, rattlesnakes and copperheads still lie coiled in cold reptile sleep. They will be crawling out soon, to bask in the sun on warmer days. Across the cliff faces, vultures cast windy circling shadows. The river is productive habitat for these efficient scavengers, performing the valuable service of consuming carrion. Both the riverside road and the passing trains claim considerable numbers of ‘road-kill’. And the river itself carries the carcasses of many animals that died in (or were thrown into) the hundreds of miles of river and its tributary streams. Among other uses, the river has ever been a convenient sewer, trash dump and disposal. Asheville’s treated sewage is flushed into the river not far upstream from a favorite put-in place for kayakers, sporting the dingy rapids. I sometimes wonder how many of them know….
Just now a long train comes rumbling down the rails, headed north out of town—a string of coal cars rolling dead-head, back to the coal fields of West Virginia. There they’ll be filled again and will return, keeping the boilers fired at LakeJulian, satisfying our high demand for electricity.
Many of the train’s rust-colored box cars are painted the garish colors and bizarre shapes of spray-can graffiti. But perhaps the messages and medium are not so different from ancient pigments scrawled on firelit cave walls, millennia ago. It seems a vital part of the primordial human birthright is creativity—to vent and rage, to weep and dream along a wide spectrum of media.
Under the grinding squealing wheels, the screeching rumbling roar, the river flows hushed until the train rolls downriver and disappears around the bend. The long water’s melodic song softly returns with many voices, flowing endlessly over ancient stones.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* * *
January 12.14. . .
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
For Lynn
From my journal: This evening, after the sun was gone under the blue mountains in a clear still sky, my sister and I were enjoying the mild January air following recent days of hard cold, when suddenly mother called to us with some urgency look up! which we did, to see a large heron flying just thirty feet directly over us: wide wings stroking slowly, rhythmically, long legs and folded feet stretched out behind—a graceful silhouette against the fading sky—flying just above the bare uplifted limbs of the maple tree, due east, toward the rising winter moon, white as an old shell washed up on a shore. A few seconds of wild poised elegance and we were children again with raised faces of wonder, and the heron was gone from our sight forever, flown beyond the eastern trees into our memories. For those few moments my mother, sister and I were given an honored place in a timeless silk landscape under empty trees, a bone-white moon, together in the fading winter dusk.
*
*
–Quilla
More September Haiku
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
September morning wind:
soft piano tones
fill the empty rooms
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
September wind,
a dry cicada shell
grasps the garden wall
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
sitting, listening
letting the autumn river
wash clean, this old mind
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
walking out of dreams
into the chill, clear night:
black sky, deep with stars
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
hard dry dirt, barn floor—
thin September weed, reaching
a thin ray of light
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
three days of Harleys
roaring up and down
quiet autumn river
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
cold starlight, sparkling
the black sky, the black land
singing with crickets
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
(from 6 years ago)
his dying hand
faintly squeezed, when I said
‘I love you’ Dad
*
*
*
*
*
–Quilla
The Ides of March . . . (from 3.15.13)
*
*
*
*
*
The Ides of March
Here, on our wooded shelf of hardwoods
and dark groves of pine, I hear it
nights, and days: the mountain river
rushing over shoals of rock shelves
a quarter mile away, rolling full
of highland snowmelt, cold latewinter rains.
But the timeless roar of waters, vanishes
with soft dry wind-songs rising in the pines.
Far above the warming land, scream and scream
two Red Shouldered Hawks, spiraling
upward, soars their sharp desire:
six brown-splotched eggs, nestled high
in an old tree crotch, a nest of sticks.
The shadow of curved wings, honed beak,
the terror of fast talons carries on. . .
West winds wash the thawing land,
the sound of tides, rushing in to wash the shore.
Our shut-in minds open old doors of doubt
to let in brightness, new joys, the scent
of fresh earth, rising wings of restless air.
And we let go, once again—everything
we think went wrong within us and without
—our personal winters of discontent.
*
–Quilla
*
“Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars
spreading his wings to the south?” –Job 39: 26
“. . .this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind
and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on
toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God
in Christ Jesus….” –Philippians 3: 13
*
* * *
December 30.12
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
For Stephan
In the quiet wake of Christ’s
celebratory birth-lights—our wound-up chimes,
canned carols—His love packed away
in boxes, yet another year. . .
We exchanged gifts the day after.
Hearty sweetbreads, thin laughter, strong tea.
Later, we rode down to the railroad tracks, shining
in light rain, the winter river rolling past.
A few old Southern boxcars parked there
years ago, rusting. Garish strokes
of graffiti mock the long retirement,
the sad and useless beauty, fading.
Your first Christmas alone.
Your wife, my daughter, chose to go on
without you. We walk the rails, together
the freight of our separate griefs, alone.
We stand and watch the river, rolling brown
and full of winter rain, a frothy tide of waves
breaking back upon itself, resisting
the dark and seaward body of the flow.
We stand before the great turbulence—
future quickly comes, passes on downstream.
The old train cars stand empty, very still.
You took a few pictures, the broken couplings.
The rain-wet shining rails
stretch out far before us—diminishing
a long slow curve, the unseen distances
saying everything we could not say.
*
*
*
*
*
*
–Quilla
Winter Sounds
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Winter Morning Sounds
The low and slanted morning light
lifts slowly through silent trees,
burning the wide blue fields
of frost.
The horses stand together, snuffling
steam, warming and waking
rays of risen sun.
At the feeder, muttering to herself
a mother Nuthatch, her children gone,
cracks and cracks a sunflower seed.
Hazy winter sun, the orchard limbs
are bare and shining now, casting
grotesque shadows on the thatch.
So little birdsong
these quiet frozen mornings.
Across the farm, a raucous flock of crows
argues from a dark pine grove.
Rolling from the smoky town
rumbles an empty coal-train:
big wheels screeching down
far down, a long steel road of rails.
*
*
*
*
*
–Quilla
Above the Winter River
*
*
*
These shortened afternoons
lowering December sun
hardly climbs the high ridgelines.
Mountain hollows, deep shadows
like old women, heavy with memory
walk very slow.
Beneath empty trees, leaves gone
so the small stream quietly goes.
Air is cool and green with winter ferns.
Two large deer bound off into the rough
yellow wicket of witch-hazel blooms.
They turn, stop there, twitching, listening.
High on the jagged barbed-wire ridge
pale sun lingers in the thorns, spinning
warm strokes, steep broom-straw slopes
pungent with dropped cones of old-field pines.
The deer sleep safe up here, wide views
vigilant, pleasant winter afternoons.
Far below, the winding river road—
a tiny schoolbus stops, blinks red lights,
letting out children at their homes.
Already deep in mountain shadows
the silver ribbon of river flows out
forever, sliding over its ancient bed
of stones. I can almost hear the child
Sighing almost silently
the long waters talk of lost time,
singing slowly to the sacred night.
*
*
*
*
–Quilla
Starlight and Rivercliffs
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Starlight and Rivercliffs
If a weathered autumn scrap of man
should ask: some lean scraps of beauty
or of truth, to feed his hungered soul
his mind, this cold and leaning light
of withered old November—
shortened days and longing shadows,
—what can he expect?
When his tender heart rattles
like a coiled snake, dry river rocks
and autumn’s seed-pods
all that’s gone awry: the world,
the nation, the Church, his loved ones
and his own dreams, what, pray tell
does he dare expect, of God?
Brilliant winter stars emerge
like far-flung words of grace, across
the universe, at dusk:
salt grains of light, fall each night
like diamonds of quiet praise,
sparkling the darkling river, ever.
Cold rapids are rushing full, and white.
Starlight crystals glimmer on the shoals—
—they sing a river’s frothy love
the long night, illumined lyrics of joy
to the tall black rivercliffs, breaking
breaking slowly, slowly down
to sand, the glittering peace
of starlight, stardust, sand.
This is just the way
love always has and will
come to us, forever.
*
*
–Quilla
End of Summer
*
*
*
*
*
Now the Goldenrods are losing luster
bending with days, and dust, cooler evenings
down the dry backroads.
As they have for centuries, farmers
burn the timeless fields—the year’s sweetness
of smoldering stubble—drifts away
with wreaths of smoke.
The wide old river runs low this time of year
mostly silent now, sliding quietly down
its ancient wash of stones.
Scribbled black calligraphies of crows
hearken into the sunset blush.
Harsh cries fade with distances, and dusk.
Summer’s last fireflies are twinkling little fires.
Memory tries to kindle, keep what it can—some light
or scent from all that’s gone from us, like smoke.
*
–Quilla
*
“All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the LORD stands forever.” –1 Peter 1: 24-25
*
January Twelfth
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
After Heavy Rains, the Winter Moon
Gently the Spirit wakes me from my dreams.
The house is asleep. Finally the rains have stopped.
A mild winter night, I sit by an open window.
A soft moonlight shape lies silent on the floor.
Dark hemlock trees are standing very still
out in the bright moon-mist.
Down the hill the small stream rushes
full of winter rain.
A half mile away, the river roars
down dark gorges toward the sea.
A long train rolls upriver slowly
rumbling through the moonlit night.
*
*
*
–Quilla
Easter afternoon
Warm spring winds blow through the heavy twisted limbs of oaks, greening them
with April lace again: soft young leaves, a late spring afternoon.
Indigo Buntings trill those bright and wistful lyrics our summer minds recall across the blue distances.
Grey doves moan some deeper well in us the passing clouds, even the ancient oaks have never known.
Horses are frolicking with delight on the bright water-colored hills, like rocking horses they dapple
the deep green fields, grey winter hooves kicking mud into the golden sun.
These days and nights of Passiontide the swollen river rolls unceasing
through our waking hours and nightly dreams, unfurling musical pages of pathos and wild joy
down and through the greening hills. It sings some distant sea, long slow rhythms in the shoals
forever breaking stones to sand.
^
^
^
A fine restaurant today. Through the west window, a crimson azalea blazes in the spring sun,
casting rosy shadows into the crowded room. Beyond them, cross-starred blooms of dogwoods
were dancing ghosts of snow in the warm April wind.
An elderly woman with thin blue-veined hands played old show tunes on the yellowed keys of the upright Steinway.
I ate thick slices of sweet spring lamb, savoring our joyful talk, the bitter salad leaves, the bread and oil,
the old piano music, dear family members once gathered here, now gone—
this very room, wooden floors sounding the dear old tunes, the air thick and redolent with the human family, the fragrant broken Lamb.
+
+
+
“Of Time and the River”
^
^
^
^
^
^
*
*
*
“Of Time and the River”
Today, the river rushes turbid brown
with recent mountain thunderstorms.
Black willows reach over the crashing waters.
Their luminescent leaves are quivering, dancing
like river-nymphs, playthings of the summer breeze.
Mid-afternoon, a remote sandbar, far downstream
between two mountain towns.
Every few minutes, a car or truck rambles down
along the winding nineteenth-century road
blasted out of river cliffs. Today, almost everyone
takes the Interstate a few miles to the East.
But here, all is much as ever was: thunderheads
pile up, the tall earth-steam of afternoons.
Tanagers hide their scarlet beauty, raspy singing
high in the sawtooth leaves of sycamores.
Lofty granite cliffs and ledges of the gorge
(up where the river flowed, eons ago)
lodge rattlesnakes in cool, inaccessible rooms.
Cicadas rattle and drone, the wide white rapids toss
and surge, washing down the riverbed.
Grain by grain, sand is made from stone.
From somewhere in the tall rank weeds
and broken highway rocks, floats the hot, sweet-sour
stench of death. Jagged vulture silhouettes
soar on rising thermals, along the looming wall
of tremendous, slate-gray thunderheads.
But who am I? to sit with pen and pad—
this transient bar of river sand, mussel shell and storm wrack
left by the winter floods—a summer afternoon in time,
and scribble down such temporary, timeless things?
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* * *
Ruach 333, by Quilla 