River

Mon Nov 26
River
42
Mid life?

I had a lie in this morning; the thinking was that there must be some perks to running my own company. In half sleep, after a fantastic weekend of entertaining and 'Bristol time', my life seemed clear in front of me. I could see it, who I was and what I was doing. My life was like a river and I could picture myself in the middle.

A trickle of water gathering momentum, a little babble of youth collects into the fast bumping over stones leaving moorland flow. Fresh, clear, fast and freezing cold. Fierce, purposeful in it's downwards force. Crashing into rocks that would not move, tumbling, foaming, falling, and crashing again and again.

We fall into villages as becks and rolled up trousered children pick out our rock cleaners under tiny arches of stone. The land eases up and alone we slide away through woods, we make small cliffs and run over moss green rocks slithery smoothed by others, into towns. Past the concrete channels we breath out and widen, spread out collecting, reaching out as if for information as our peripheries tinkle bright lightly over pebbles and fish swim deep in our belly.

The momentum towards the sea is strong but we meander, the sky opens up, bees buz in our banks and fattening cows squidge down openings to suck still water with hot mouths.

Like retirement we join with others to form a wide, deep, powerful journey and quietly shift through cities. We can sense the salt and soon we are to feel the sand bottomed estuary. Eventually and inevitably we are lost in the deep blue forever sea.

Others have been partly gene whisked off by the wind to land on the moor, almost recognizable. But my river flows deep and rests with the echoing songs and hovering seathrough fish.