River Rock

1. River

Water whipped white where
the river throbs through a throat of rock
here, vital as blood through the aorta
the water charged with air, the teeming rush of it,
it roars among this crush of stumbled boulder
gouged now and fluted smooth as the skin
of some born beast about to rear –
the power of it, the churning urge and push of it:
its trick is in liquid licked into shape
or in the bare air shared and consumed
here where the spume is gurgitated,
or in the aching accommodation of ancient rock,
the joining in risen sound and force, the perfect
calm and the beauty of unceasing change;
like the blood: constant, inconstant.

2. Rock

and here am I at the foot of that thundering fall –
permanent? impermeable? immutable fool!
flatly forging the ephemeral stream
in a faltering dream of sufficiency –
absorbed, submerged, unseen, drowned,
blunt eyes facing inward,
turning away where the water falls.
Reason will warn us what water will do,
but who will a rock listen to?