Seeking Water

River running wide and smooth,

With gentle ripples and splashes few.


Is it possible to lose a river? The ridiculous situations I find myself in. But here I am, on what used to be the banks of a wide river that ran straight across the winding country. Or at least I think this is where it used to be.

When I had left, this river held nothing more to me than drowned dreams, another barrier to my long awaited freedom and a flat pebble or two lying at the bottom of those clear waves. For, to cross that river was to have this town and everything it held at an arms length where it could not infect me with its lack of purpose. The idleness of its occupants repulsed youthful energy. Many an evening would sidetrack from the dimmed shops to a walk beside the river. When the tide was out, one could follow the swirling trails of mud it left behind on the strained banks where the grass sank slowly to dip its longest stems into cool liquid life. Like gentle fingers, the ebbing currents carved furrows into the earth, and soon, soft thick grass would shoot from those patches of rich earth to pattern the lawn. If one was lucky, they’d think the fairies had passed here, dancing in their rings, lushness expelled from their dainty bodies upon brushing mother earth.

The river cut this town from the rest of the world. It was a buffer against the busy activities that buzzed on the other bank, where everything slows down as soon as it touches the water. If one stood at the other bank looking in, they would be able to imagine that time sped past slower here, for every minute in the real world, only a second was passed here. On my frequent trips around the streets, only one person could regularly be seen, the others coming and going as they may, slowly, sparsely. Holding the bright embroideries in her hand, Mary would skip down in her blue cotton gown, waiting to show me her work. But that was many years ago, and she too had been chased away and worn down. Married, they tell me. Married and went off to God knows where. That seemed to be the natural order of things.

At times, I wondered why I returned. This place had been my very first prison, and now, after finding my freedom and wondering for the first time in many, many seasons if I could still find a home. Anywhere could be a home when one has seen the world, but it was good to have sentimental reminders of the past haunting my wearied steps. The mango tree in the garden had died, as typical, mortal joys do. The house would’ve been unlivable, left the way it was. The garden bench had rusted beyond recognition, they sigh, wearily. For it would have to be removed at their expense. The houses have changed, the old Victorians becoming too cumbersome, too worn down and utterly too beautiful to maintain. But where was my river?