10/24/2025
This is my story, as I tell it today.
A life as a river.
I begin again
as the glacier melts beneath the steady rays of the spring sunrise—
peak water upon Panther Mountain.
The soft, steady drip of spring thaw
slides across gravel.
From here, I can already feel the pull of the ocean,
drawing me toward a current I cannot name.
I take form as a brook,
weave through old cedar forests—
a waterbearer to serve the ancient ones,
traversing the mountain from pines to poplars,
from certainty to the rubble of a landslide.
I find myself at an impasse in the valley.
Momentum halts,
blocked by a silent stone wall
that does not let the waters of my body run unbridled.
For a time, I forget my power.
Pool and stagnate.
I believe there is nowhere to go.
But in the smallest of fissures—
a crack in the heart of the wall—
water erodes stone.
I find my way to the other side.
I begin to remember a freedom as claimless as the sky.
I push back against the banks that think they define me,
so certain that I know who I am.
I let the murky waters of resentment
mark but not mar me—
let experience settle like sediment.
My body snakes through the valley,
carving serpentine paths along meadows and marshland.
I let the world seep in—
swell with life
and loss.
I learn to say goodbye,
over and over,
to landscapes that teach me of love.
I move into the soil of the earth,
navigating underground canals,
alone in the dark
beneath the silent wisdom-keeping mountains.
I claim sanctuary,
widening my banks to become a reservoir—
a vast pool of remembrance.
In time, I ascend,
gurgling and bubbling up through a wellspring,
percolating just above the surface of creek—
a small, unassuming becoming.
I am the waterfall that starts the river.
And in the end,
the river that surrenders to the sea.
Not afraid to lose myself—
a mere wave,
one alongside countless others,
calling the ocean to rise.
