Cachagua Creek Ramble







I hear the watersong before I see it
   a few yards down a faded trail.
      Rocky riverbed offers harmonic intermission,
   delicate scent of stream over rouged moss.
      Camber of creek over stone,
   living sculptures change tone
            at the turn of my head.

Midstream, an embedded boulder
      seems to float.
         Wizened old man with toothless grin,
      cracked smile snakes across wide face.
         Two sunken nostrils form a bony nose.
      Deep socket eyes, flirtatious
         blossom of green behind his left ear.

Downstream, white water
      bubbles leap and spit from pocks
         in mercurial rapids.
      I post myself on a boulder
         facing east. A mass
      of stone snags and baffles divert
            but never possess the flow.

Pine logs, fallen temples suspended
      across carbonated cascades,
         expose severed rootips.
      One lush clump of rivergrass springs
         from the stub of a cottonwood
      like ruffled plumage
         on an exotic bird.

I toss a stick sailboat
      on the surface,
         watch it slip and frisk
      between cobblestone channels.
         Arroyo willows form skylights,
      pavilions of green
            over a woodland empire.

Downstream water music
      murmurs through small ponds,
         but here she babbles with the rocks...
      'what of next winter's rain,
         menacing rumors of a larger dam,
            the interior rumble of fault lines?'

White butterflies dance in frivolous flight.
      I listen to the melodies and undercurrents,
         make photographs of granite forms,
      foam trapped in milky shallows.
         Birds call from treetops,
      finespun blue dragonflies touch down
         on speckled stones.

Something happens
      whenever
         we make ourselves
            available
               to magic.

Poetry and Photography, c1999 Laura Bayless