It Flows Coldly ByI am sitting, overlooking the site of Lock & Dam #2 on the least industrious of our rivers. It is very cold, and the wind is blowing. I have brought lunch, and the warmth of the food makes it welcome, and it tastes better for it. The river makes the wind visible where they fight, the water rising up against the air in little wavelets that dance across the surface as the battles rage from shore to shore. The sun is shining, but there are the distant smudged diagonals of snow squalls all around me in the sky.
It is sometimes useful to come to these places and imagine the unwinding of years, to try to see them as they were before the bridges and the roads and the sculpting of the land. River valleys in winter are good for this: the natural sight lines are more or less preserved, and the trees have not yet dropped their green veil over the shape of the surrounding slopes. It is unfortunate that the river itself is something of a fabrication: the locks and dams, while creating great utility, have tamed the thing, a steady navigable channel all the way up till the turn in the river where the work ends some tens of miles upstream from here, and such things are no longer important, or desired.
The river is a leaden brown today, with hints of blue from the shattered reflection of the sky, muffled with cloud. It has been warm enough that there is no ice on the river. There are birds on the river, both circling above and bobbing along, complacent. There is very little trash floating by.
The air is crisp enough to snap, and sound carries well in it. The traffic rumbles over the high bridge, each gear change of the big trucks clear and distinct in the distance. A train thunders someplace, low sounds carrying without direction. A more mangled hum of machinery comes from the roads all round, a wash of small engines speeding up and slowing down with the merges and passings. The wind is everywhere, whisking through the dried tan husks of old grasses and brambles at the shore line. The river itself only whispers, and even then I must go down the steps to the edge to hear it.
Planes hang lazy in the big sky. The other bank is distant, but looks strangely near. A gantry stands over there, reddened with time, moving back and forth on its short track, lifting and dropping twisted bits of industrial refuse for hidden purposes. It is very cold.
All content under copyright by the author. Dancing is permitted. The strange deltic glyphs in the sand under tidal flow are a pleasure to watch in their deepening. Offer not valid in Kansas. We put it down and then we lost it. It all happens in the corner of the eye. Commentary accepted at comment@goob.com, although the traps are agressive and the pointy bits simply drip with dark liquour. We have a dog, but we do not own it. Thank you.