going down to the water I
lay aside my clothes on the rhythmic stone and
immerse with slow steady waves my body
in the warm and then the cold bands of the river,
a fine silt rising, hot sun, long dry summer
pulling off the flow, rounded rocks
now banded with the declines of day by day.
damselflies, chromatic colors on slender wings,
float locked in their coital calligrams, a pair
alight on my skin, bright in the strong sun.
each their own and each all the other’s,
the ten thousand things rise as life’s aether,
the sandstone bluffs above riddled
with the stone turned traces of it all
in mudflat varves and delta bottoms,
it all cycles back and is new and is old again,
going down to the water,
again and again and again.