THE PENNY PUB
Sun Goes Down on Someone’s Life, Come Find Me at the River
“For they were young and the Thames was old, and this is the tale that River told…” — Rudyard Kipling
There’s a river not ten minutes from my door. When I go, Baba is always there. Which sounds crazy as a loon, given she’s been gone since I was twelve, but I sense her. There. With me. But maybe makes some kind of sense if I consider it’s the same river runs through her farm.
Some kind of sense, considering if I follow the river forty-nine miles northeast, takes me right to the spot her house crumpled to the ground. House where she raised up my daddy, and he raised up me.
Little mopsy haired girl feeding chickens, floating sticks on the water, skipping pebbles, eating berries off the shrubs like some wild baby bear cub. Sitting in tousled sunshine reading some book.
Reading Wind in the Willows, where Rat says the river is brother and sister, and aunts and his whole wide world and he don’t want no other world but the river, and I nod just quiet, think me too, Rat. Me, too.
Same water. Calling me home. Thing about a river is unlike a lake or the sea, a river has a destination. It’s going somewhere. Run there eager, see where it will…
