The river greets me at this gateway hour
as it slinks through twilight like a secret
receding into netherworlds, its depths
shielded by arrival of night’s perplexities.

Within its quietude, creatures are mudbound,
await to be swept up by flicks of wind,
to spiral into its sleek rocky blueness.
Wintering currents roll through dirt, by trees
that receive with whispers. Sky reconciles
past with present, lays its tenderness
onto the low-slung back of river now
moving toward me on the watch point.

I glimpse my reflection; it is reconfigured
as it is taken elsewhere on the icy edge, into
gradations of light and darkness, light redux.
Riding these waters, I become a simpler woman,
unfettered, unafraid. Welcomed into a wilder fold.