A Study of Divergence

Once he crossed the river.  Once
across, the river swelled, forgetting

that he crossed.  He, too, like a river,
forgot about his crossing, the river’s

patient rise behind him.  Patient,
his chest rose; behind him a hundred

pale suns dangled over hills he, too,
had crossed.  Breezy, like the lift

under a lark’s wing, he waited, waited
for the river to remember that he, too,

had lived, had forded this and that
crossing, and had chosen to make

life--to take breath, to release it.
And it was this choice the river,

fathomless, could fathom: the eternal
“what if” of a man, his feet in a river,

crossing, that lark in the cottonwood
nearby, talons clenched, drawing breath.