The Mouth of the River

The Mouth of the River It’s February and the wind attacks from the northeast; It hurls icy pellets of freezing rain into my face and down my neck; It slams a delicious salty mist into my nose and eyes and lungs; It plows the ocean into the mouth of the river; The tide is high; the waves are rushing, and in a magic instant the stinging raindrops all turn to snow; The gusting wind tosses the waves that smack against the pilings—spray splashes the wood almost drowning out the drone of the highway; Millions of fat, white snowflakes, whirling in horizontal sheets, almost obliterate the estates on the far shore and the crowded middle-class expanded cottages on the near shore; Ring-bills and adolescent herring gulls swoop and hover; Their sharp shrieks cut through the wind’s roar like rusty hinges; They thrive in the storm, in the cold; They thrive on food from the sea, river, and marsh; They thrive on scraps and trash left by humans; They adapt to the dense population of humans better than I; The tide rises higher; The northeast wind shoves the ocean down into the throat of the river; I wish the river would rise up and engulf the shores; I wish it would chew-up and swallow the houses that sit so securely, so arrogantly close to the water; I wish the river would rebel and claim Superiority, once and for all; But the river will not gulp down the wooden dwellings; The wind heaves and the waves surge, but the houses stand untouched; The river hears the wind and feels the force of the storm, but it cannot lash out; The surrounding hills of rock hug and protect it from the open sea; This is why the river has served humans for thousands of years and will remain submissive thousands of years after I’m gone; The wind huffs and howls as the snowflakes hit my face and obstruct my view; The water swells, and the gulls whirl freely; I can only imagine how the mouth of the river looked before pavement, shingles, and painted clapboards infested its banks; I let my heart go back 1000 years, and, for a moment I let my soul breathe freely, and—just as the snow turns back into rain—launch myself into the wind And fly over the roiling sea—black waters below—black rain all around; The storm whacks my face as I battle the gusts like a gull skimming over he heaving, ice-cold, wind-whipped, salty waves; I let the wind toss me around—the cold freezes my face, but I don’t care, because now I can only hear the sounds of the ocean; so I disappear into the black wilderness of the stormy night at the mouth of the river.