River Crossing after the manner of Robert Frost I'd like to go by the river way again - not the highway, all heat and hard-topped haste - but the path that loops through the low, green grass, where the cane bends and the birds keep no clock. To walk with bare toes digging into mud, plastic bag stretched overhead like a flag of surrender to weather and wetness - that was the old route, the early road home. There is a bridge, sure - solid, quarter mile upriver, with its rusting nails and rail - but it never felt like mine. A thing built by others who feared the river’s shifting mood. Better to feel the flood’s cold shiver teasing your ribs, or dragging at your knees, than trust to someone else’s timbers. Water, I find, is more honest than men. I was small when I learned to cross alone, though always with eyes from shore watching me - a brother’s, a cousin’s, a neighbor’s glance, or the old man with the limp who smoked leaves and called us fish children. He had a way of knowin...
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