Poem: The Color of a River

Spring water (Photo by Gary Noren)

Tea,
they’ve said,
the color of this river,
from tannins in headwater bogs—
But instead I’d call it red:
the scarlet red of cardinal flowers peering from
the shaded slopes, or
that rosy coral of a
native brook trout’s belly band,
thin sliver of life held gently
in a hand and then released again into
a cool tributary stream,
or even that near-florescent orange-red
of old jack gone to seed in his pulpit,
redefining earth tones from beneath
his emerald hood

Fierce yellow—that’s the color of this river,
the yellow of an eagle’s gaze
taking our measure from the vantage of
a lofty pine, or the comic yellow legs
of small green herons hunting minnows in
the shallows of backwater bays;
and beyond to unimagined hues of blue,
to shorter days of ice beneath a pale winter sky,
the glacial blue of pressure ridges,
midnight blue of moonlit shadows on the snow,
then ah, in spring, that saturated indigo
refracted from the wings
of buntings just returned,
before the blooming flox in June cast
violet upon the shores

It’s our own Van Gogh’s palette
shining through the night reflecting stars in
azure skies,
and shifting with the progress
of a painted turtle
swimming underwater,
stroking out of shadow into light

If this is tea, well then,
it’s tea with honey
Not one color,
but all colors
Not one river,
but all the rivers large and small:
every feeder stream and
tributary,
every temporary water course
for snowmelt or for rain,
that remakes and renews
this river through our days
in wakefulness and sleep;
even now, as we speak,
and in so doing,
somehow
remaking and
renewing us
along the way