The arrangement is powerfully familiar: water
Rushing noisily over sizable rocks tumbling
And eroding down this canyon in the woods,
A maintained but muddy gravel road running
Alongside, practically hugging the rapids.
Behind you a slope was dynamited years ago
To squeeze space for the road. Now it calves
Rockfalls cleared away by someone often, often
Enough to keep the road mostly passable.
You found the turnout you expected to find.
In front of you someone vanished around the bend.
The light in the forest falls at the right angle,
Green and tree-filtered and silent except
Or because of the constant hoarse roar of the stream.
It all seems in order, just as you remembered it, so
In a way, yes, you have been this way before.
You’ve been like this, you’ve passed by here,
And you will never be some way absolutely new
Anyway. Perfect newness would have to eliminate
You, you whose partnerships of borrowed thoughts
Sharing aging brain cells tumble over themselves,
Examples of those very quasiperiodic, cyclic
Exchanges of difference and similarity
They’re trying so helplessly hard to explain.
No one steps into a different river even once.
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