A River at the Same Pace
In the morning, too, the river flows under the bridge. Where the lights once fell, the back of the man who fished there is gone, and the bridge lights that lay on the water have vanished as well. The river carries off those lights and that place, and still it flows at the same pace. I remember an old man who had been sitting on the riverside path standing up to look toward the bridge. He stood there so long I wondered what he was thinking, but at the time I simply walked on. Where the old man was looking, too, the river must have been passing the same spot, then as now. The path at dawn was empty, and the river I watched leaning on the railing flowed slowly even before the sun rose. Beneath it, yesterday's bridge lights still seemed to be drifting by.
On her way home pulling her cart after packing up her stall in the dawn market alley, an old woman sat on the bus-stop bench and gazed at the sky a long while. Passing beside her, all I felt was how cold the morning air was.
The wet trail those cart wheels dragged along must have reached all the way to the bus stop. Still not dry, since the sun hadn't yet risen.
I walked over toward where the old man had been looking. Standing at the railing, the current below the bridge makes its sound a little way off. People walking the path with steps as heavy as their years cross that bridge every evening. Today their footsteps, too, moved at the same speed as the river.
I was watching the place where the ripples parted for a moment between the footsteps crossing that bridge, then closed again. In that gap, the old man's shadow passed once more.
I was sitting quietly where the river had passed. I've never leaned on the railing and counted the ripples, but their speed was always the space between my eyes closing and opening.
The river wouldn't have been in the same place before I opened my eyes, or after I closed them. I too stood there just a moment, keeping pace with it.
A cat passed between the boxes piled in the square before the dawn market. Before the lights came on, only dew had gathered in the empty space. The cat's footsteps and the boxes' shadows will both have moved elsewhere by evening.
Reading that dew had gathered in every spot that dawn, I think the same dew must have settled on the riverside railing by now.