American Flamingo

The River Comes Closer

8 The River Comes Closer An owl calls across the river. Another answers farther downstream. Stars glitter through the branches of pines and on the back of the river. He sits still, leaning against a tree. The river comes a little closer. Deer come closer. He hears the riffle upstream and the one down. Water eddies and runs susurrous in his mind. Looking up into the sweeping current of starlight, fish idle and hold against the flow. Now, just above his head, a third owl calls— six blue notes like circles widening on the surface of a pool, picked up and repeated across the river, then down away. The sound goes around, an echo, an eddy in the dark before dawn. He listens, slips his hand into the cold river, turns it over, palm up, to cup the water to hold stars. ...