I

Now the children have all gone. 2 a.m.
midair on the trestle, and all that might
anywhere be found, you might find here.
Crouch down, take hold of a plank and lower yourself
onto the high shelf of a concrete foot
just wide enough for your body when you lie.
The sky may map the motive of the universe
pinned within a ring of sycamores,
but tonight you see only the river—
companion of lovers and killers,
dark as the mountains it drags down,
figmented with starshine and pollution.

Be still. It is difficult to breathe.
A last train rumbles on a distant track.
Upstream, among a gloom of mountain laurel
something vast has slipped into the water
—your life, perhaps. This is its one passage.
You were right to have come, there is no other time.
Strange and beautiful vision, truesight, lit
with the false fire dazzling the river.
If you can see it, then you may understand
the awkward pattern in the cold procession,
unmistakable now, the pure line of intention,
the current rippling like a wedding train
of darkness; from darkness; into darkness.
What monster, what disheveled miracle
disembogued from its mysterious transit
will come to air beyond the drowning pool
beneath the dam, gemmed in the storm-tangle?

II

On the trestle there is a spot for diving,
and above, a spot for leaping.

From houses, a child steals away,
makes his house in the thickets.

In the water the whites of his body
shine like treasure.

There is a secret place for swimming—
and below, a place for drowning.

The terrible last breath: Little one,
do not be amazed

you are passing, you are passing.
The river now will make you.