Sitting River Meditation

(Johnson, VT)

At night the river,

            frozen over, fits



its bed like a key

            its lock. The current



keeps turning but

            the surface won’t



open. I can

            hear ice click, shift,



its crystalline pins

            caught. Twenty miles south



of Lake Eden,

            its origin,



the Gihon’s near its end.

            After the old red mill,



before it enters

            the Lamoille, it falls



flat, a closed

            door. Wrong key



in the wrong lock,

            I like to put



my mind where two worlds

            meet & agree to



disagree. The teachers

            say : take up the water,



make it your body

            & mind, make it thought.



But I think I

            must think the way

elements make

            temporary



arrangements

            with weather :



hydrogen locked

            to oxygen,



each strong molecule

            expands, a lattice



of tetrahedrons.

            All their new shapes make



ephemeral color

            the way what light there is



at midnight heightens

            ice, brighter briefly



than snow. & toward

            that whiteness my mind



pushes outward from

            the interior



where olivine water

            washes over gravel



& sand. Thought

            exerts drag



against the icy

            underside, & I



feel a border

            experience



can’t cross over

            into knowledge



the way in front

            of paradox



my mind stops :

            for five years

my ill body killed me

            while it kept me alive.



On the bank bare

            brambles catch snow



weighted with rain

            that falls straight down,



hissing as it hits

            the ice. Who am I



now. Above : mountains.

            Below : the river.



Both moving & still,

            inaccessible



& everywhere, being

            is & keeps to itself,



hidden in emblems

            of the outward, seeds



extracted from bracts

            of a dry pine cone.



The spring equinox

            is near : rain coaxes



the icy lattices

            to relax into lapse,



little cracks

            mid-river.



It’s so quiet

            I hardly feel



desire. But its soft force

            flenses the strongest water



from thaw : there, at

            the thinnest brink,



kinesis that

            resists stillness,

thinking on thinking,

            the current pulses.