Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until all ends
—Mary Oliver from “What Can I Say”


Of course, the river’s story never ends,
even if its bed lies dry and stony—
it is river still.

Of course, you are somewhere in it,
sometimes at river’s edge, sometimes
deep in bottom mulch.

And, of course, nothing—not river,
not you—truly ends, even when you
are no longer embodied.

Listen: In that hush of current you are
carried, in riffles and rapids, in the curve
of the placid meander.

Your story is ferried by water, the one you
are still writing, the one that will never
be, blessedly, finished.