海角大神

River view

September 18, 1985

The river that one cannot step in twice has gone its own unique unfinished way, and this one passes, uniformly brown, carrying as random travelers a paper cup, a leaf, a mesh of straw, a wedge of styrofoam, a waterbug, target -- neatly circled -- of a trout. Thank God for fish, thank God for any life: the surface-stepping waterbug, the fern nodding in a niche below the bank, the greening of the algae on a rock. The river that one cannot step in twice has gone its own unique, unfinished way. At least I paused to notice it today.