Upstream
The water swells, then a push and past the broken berm, each stroke into the weight and heft of known water, the taste of fallen fern, the smell of serpentine, of redwood. Somewhere it is written we must return to the place of our birth, each action of our life propelling us closer, even as we think we are traveling away. Somewhere it is written we must carry our own ragged bodies upstream. Somehow uphill over places where water flows thin and fast across slippery rocks. Now I too am throbbing under this stone bridge with my brothers. Once I thought mostly of leaving. Now I want only to go deeper towards home. Above us trees stretch green into the winter rain. Beneath lie those who came first, eyes open in the silence of the riverbottom.