Sediment

A poem, a place

We knew this before men
in their hubris flooded
the valley with decades
of water and settling
silt.

Remember?

The way I cycled,
wound up the road, flowed
through the last cool places
clinging to the hillsides to find
You, barefoot in still-damp grass,
nightshirt floating, hair spilling, searching
for June’s first berries.

The way I leaned the metal frame of my motion
against the curling iron of your boundaries.
How you came
to me with a copper cup, water
splashed from the fountain.
I sipped not noticing
the dust
already on my skin.

Stopping for you
and cool
water became ritual.

First in the still-damp grass, then
under the wisteria dripping
from your eaves. Finally
passing through your peeling
blue shutters to awake
barefoot beside you and taste
the last berry of June.

When they harnessed the river
we ran for high
ground together.

The water came and with it
the silt, hushed voices of mountains carried
away, drifted down in years of sinking,
pressing, compacted silence,
burying, until I had no right
to ask you.

Now at the receding edge,
waiting jagged like layers of glass, sharp
from years of drifting
your still-June eyes ask me how
I dare take your hand.

I have become the brittle and the cracked
layers exposed. Still,
step with me.

Walk with worn feet over sharp limits
rounding under weathered arches, twisted toes.

Discover that under
the rippling, edges
soften, forgive, defy
definition, until we are ankle-deep in shifting
silt that can never be
imprisoned in solid.

It’s too much
to ask, but plunge with me
anyway, feel
your breath fly in the June waters. Let
sun-shattered waves permeate
our bodies, feet dancing in glittering
sediment so many meters above
this place we once wandered
barefoot to pluck the first
berries of June.

©Trisha Traughber 2019 words and images.