Mountain Climbing a River

The Hudson anoints our summer reflections

in sun-flecked currents.  My son,

pointing to the river says, “Why,

does the water have mountains on it?”

I could cut those peaks down for him,

break them into waves hoisted by wind,

but I rather his mind leap and dance

through wakes of Everests.

Later he could revise the nature

of the succulents by the bed, tell me

how the smell of their dirt fertilizes

my sleep from the windowsill,

what will take root in my dreaming brain,

sprout into a creeping vine, twining

a green embrace for the sky’s orphans,

seed of what we are: questions

posing as answers.  But I have aged

into the lustrous ache of this river,

a body of heavy churning, and wake

to the slowed currents of each morning,

blink sleep away, hope not to sink

before retrieving a small river stone

from the day’s cloudy flux, something to offer

my son, or his sister when she asks,

“Why does it seem like everything

is going somewhere?”  And I could give

the world back to her imagination, where

it belongs, rather than tell her, “Because it is.”