Day 4: Fragile Banks, Snow Stones, & Extraordinary Cries
Along the Riverscene Trail, the Meramec River fans itself out. Broad banks expose themselves to shallow water that runs sometimes in two directions at once if you watch quite carefully. Cliffs on the river's far side have been made fragile by erosion, and the trains far off downstream wail out wild cries that resound down through the Meramec's gallery of eroded bluffs. They screech some kind of timeless, extraordinary hurt; a lone widow's yearning or the sound the earth might cry out when storms and fires tear through its most closely guarded glens.
The creek leading to the Meramec is adorned with stones that blind with their white; an almost alien, snow-like glare that places you with one foot on earth and the other on the moon. But the highlight of it all is just before the snowy moon stones. Beside the trail's heading rests a soft bowl-shaped valley with one of its curved sides pulled down to meet the sloping forest floor. And inside this open bowl, rests a very still, low-lying quiet. Unmistakably, it is the type of quiet that revels in the impossible solitude of true listening. I can't help but wonder who has noticed it before. How long ago was it that someone was stopped by its quiet as they made their way to the river?
For the Anniversary of My Death - By W. S. Merwin
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what
The king of Castlewood ^ enthroned by the woodland vandals
