Over the Edge and Back Again

The river begins where the wreckage returns.
At the source, it still looks almost clean,
bright enough to mirror the sky,
gentle enough for children
to place their hands in it.
So they build beside it.
They raise houses along the banks.
They plant gardens in the dark soil.
They hang lanterns from doorways
and call the water a blessing
because, for a while, it is.
But farther down, the current changes.
The banks loosen.
The road breaks at the shoulder.
A porch tilts toward the river
like it has heard its name called.
Near the edge, a house is falling.
Its door still painted in bright blue.
Its windows still catching the light.
Someone, once, chose the color of that door
as though choosing could make a thing permanent.

Then the river takes it.

Wood, stone, glass, threshold,
the small evidence of ordinary life,
all carried over the edge
and into the unseen dark below.
But nothing leaves this world.
What falls returns.
Broken smaller.
Stained deeper.
Mixed into the water
that rises again at the source.
By morning, the river is darker.
They see it.
Of course they see it.
So they move what can still be moved.
They brace the banks with stone.
They pull children back from the softening edge.
They lift young trees from the mud
and carry them uphill.
No one tries to save everything.
The river has already taken too much
for that kind of innocence.
But not every house is lost.
Not every garden has entered the current.
Not every hand has opened
and let the rope go slack.
So, they keep working.
One person holds a wall upright
while another drives the nail.
One gathers glass from the shallows.
One plants a tree
where a roof once broke the rain.
And above them, the river moves on,
beautiful, ruined, necessary,
bearing what was lost
back into what is still.

Over the edge,
and back again.

At the source, someone kneels
beside the darkened water,
sets another stone into the bank,
and builds it higher.`