The Lower River Trail is three quarters of a mile
rendered in palette knifed pure ascent and skin oils.
Seasons of rain and the kind of humidity
that presses rivulets into diorama gel and
years out of season autumn leaves
into foil canoes with grasshopper boatswains at their helms,
have bowed the ground and brushed
the flat rocks into the scales of a lizard
fat and happy to stretch long in the sun.
I am listening to the exhalations of it's body,
the lengthy wheeze and easy nostril flare
as it's spine bucks upward against my heels,
breathing in, and content to slough away my prodding
with an unhurried roll toward the shade of a gulch
peppered with tree limbs older than my bones
before rocking backward to the sun filled breaks
in the canopy to gather more sleep.
I am listening along the ascent of the winding trail,
gathered up and heaped like chord by a wanderer before me
who found there was nothing at the end of the journey
worth more than the aimless sauntering before it's terminus,
to the bullfrogs talk among themselves, nearly tripping
along the lizards back where a scale has come loose.
They are quite the gossips and I have no tales to share
with them, and their swollen throats,
over tea and cakes and fly wings
that they have not heard and turned over
time and again already.
Rising to the sun and sky tented above
where the trunks of trees bend away beneath the weight of
August's thickly piled clouds, to the humped back lizard
trundles away for the deep of warmed mud
over the skillet of paved cement and mowed fields.
The little ships sail away, down river, crews fatigued
with manning their small oars with their smaller hands.
Beyond the treeline lies the aerodrome
and rattle bang of inline 12 cylindered Cicada engines
and the swizzle hiss of rotary engine hornets
flying low in high speed airshow stunt work
above crickets clinging to green bladed grandstands
and belting out echoing applause
in the way a packed house rioting for encore only could.
The Lower River Trail is a three quarter mile descent
that hails from the hill top overlooking the Monongahela,
if you stand on tip toe and the afternoon light is just right.
I am listening to many things along it's length.
There is so much more I have not heard, the lizard sighs
from the place it has gone that I do not yet know.
These hours have been more beautiful
without you
and me trying to wrestle words and language,
trying to corral my inchoate thoughts
into streams of conversation
while you walked beside me.
