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Show Go Love/206 below Then the way down, traversing a series of drop-offs where I've broken road tips and busted knees Then the powerfully steep stumble down a boulder field, and the grassy opening of river corridor. I see two deer, two ravens caw-cawing into blue sky. Here is the most alone place, no sound save wind and water. I was here, on this spot, the fall before Lara was born, petrified at becoming a father. Shit, for all I knew, the baby could be a dwarf, not that that's so bad-this was my blood, not far-fetched at all. Take that and add alcoholics and wife beaters and Arizona dog eaters, not to mention the inescapable Stepwell blood Mama'd always hoped was good crazy, and the blood now, between me and my adoptive father and all we'd left behind or had in front of us. How Mama must have felt, on the bus from Tucson to Little Rock, watching me sleep in the seat beside her, knowing full well that she was responsible. The river flows to us, not just away-we're never in the same place twice, even though it seems that way. Upriver, a flash of purple-only lighter, lavender, the color redbud in Arkansas redbud For a long time I keep seeing, thinking what on earth? A woman wearing a bridal veil casts silvery line, the length of her rod moving from vertical to horizontal, vertical to horizontal. She's thigh-deep in a ripple. "Hey?" she says when I'm within earshot "Do us a favor?" She doesn't miss a lick, line sings over the pale green water. "Sure" "We're from Virginia," she says, and I hear it in her voice, a nice thing out west, to hear your native tongue from the mouth of a pretty woman. She brushes back the lavender veil so I see blue eyes. "This is our honeymoon." The groom hands me their camera, joins his new wife arm in arm, smiling like there's no tomorrow. |
