The River

With a roar and a flash,
My life recedes on the outgoing tide
And I am left looking up
At the bright sky,
A fish out of water
On a sharp bed of stone.
As I wait for the high tide
To cradle me in its arms,
Carrying me back,
The light slowly fades
And my mind fills
With tableaus of ancient times
Peopled by beings long gone,
Locked in an endless embrace
Of birth and death, love and hate,
Destruction and creation,
Sorrow and joy,
Their faces and forms
Becoming a many-faceted panoply
Of life shifting
In serpentine fashion,
A great river on which flow
Seasons and ages, winding its way
To this point in time
Where I float suspended
Between two worlds,
One eye to the ground,
The other toward the sky,
Waiting for the moon to awaken
From her sleep with Endymion
And rising from the waves, take me home
On the ocean's billowy breast.