Conversations with the River Stones
“River, dear River,
I wonder why are you called Stones?”
I asked of the river I was walking by.
It is a Saturday afternoon.
Spring, though here in the calendar,
is absent from the breeze that runs cold.
The river runs.
Quietly. Endlessly.
But it hears my question.
The soft splashes of its waves whisper a reply.
“Names are kept by humans.
Me, I am just water.
I am the same water that you saw,
when you were in Florida in December.
In Colorado, in the lake that sits beside the Maroon bells,
I am the San Fransisco Sea.
I am the Sabarmati that you have left home.
I am water. I have no name.
Stones, I am called by you, humans.
So that you can differentiate me from me.
Don’t ask me why I am called Stones.
You tell me. Why am I called Stones?”
Damned if I know, I thought in my head.
But didn’t say it out loud.
Never pays to piss off a river.
For one, it has a lot more water if it decides to piss you off instead.
“Probably because there are Stones around you here?”
I guessed, badly.
Like I always do when I do not know what is going on.
It shrugged, I think. It didn’t care.
I kept walking.
Somewhere, I saw a man fishing.
He stood there, marble-esque,
a fishing line piercing through the river’s surface,
waiting for a fish.
“What do you think of fishing?”,
I asked the river.
“I don’t.” It replied quite truthfully.
But it must have guessed my rebellion build up.
For it continued.
“Fishing is an art of waiting.
In the entire river of possibilities,
A person decides to pick a place,
and wait; for a fish to come to them.
The sea comes to me once every year.
As rains. But I don’t like waiting.
So I run towards it.
The roads that run from the doors of destiny,
go two ways.
One down the path of choices.
Where you choose at every fork and do,
and each deed, as a consequence,
brings another to be done,
until you reach your sea.
The other stops around the corner,
at a coffee shop.
You wait there and drink coffee.
You only meet those,
who decide to come in to that,
one coffee shop that you are sitting in.
There are a lot more coffee shops
on the earlier road.
Have I answered your question?
I am sorry I flowed on.
What was your question again?”
I smiled at the unwitting pun.
I had said once that the voice of running water is wisdom,
if you can translate such things.
And I found that to be true.
“Doesn’t matter. You answered it all right.”
I walked up to the river’s edge,
where the path I walked and the water,
became one.
I bid it good-bye there.
It flowed on.
On the way back,
I met a river which was different,
than the river that I had walked with,
On the way to the waters edge.
It looked at me as if seeing me,
for the first time.
Which it was, in a way.
I shook my head at these strange ramblings,
and walked back to the car.
Tired, I took a deep gulp of water,
from the bottle I was carrying and
plonked down on the seat.
I looked at the last of the water in the bottle.
A ghost of a smile flickered on my face.
The face was mine, the ghost was the river’s.
I took the river back home.
With me.
Within me.
Conceived while walking the Stones River Greenway. More of my writing is here.
