River view

The river that one cannot step in twice has gone its own unique unfinished way, and this one passes, uniformly brown, carrying as random travelers a paper cup, a leaf, a mesh of straw, a wedge of styrofoam, a waterbug, target -- neatly circled -- of a trout. Thank God for fish, thank God for any life: the surface-stepping waterbug, the fern nodding in a niche below the bank, the greening of the algae on a rock. The river that one cannot step in twice has gone its own unique, unfinished way. At least I paused to notice it today.