Adam Canoes the Meramec River

ADAM CANOES THE MERAMEC RIVER / Walter Bargen Around the last bend in the river he turns back to see a cathedral of sycamores and birch their high green walls leaning over dark pews of water where fins turn the hymnal of shadows where gills chant through the slow chorus of current where crickets are the click of the organ pedal as it springs back past the bark rough nave filled with ushers dressed neatly as kingfishers dipping down to the sun-struck surface for offerings. They fly up the wide quiet aisle to a sapling crowded gravel bar mid-channel a floating wafer of light against the dark hillside of growth. Caught in rapids he is swept beyond the next bend that stills in a slow sermon of reflections where he lies back and remembers the one temple for the first time today. The Missouri Review · 15 ...