Winter-verdance in Blackwater

Thirty meters down, the river crashes over into thereuntil invisible ecstasy, roaring against the final bottom-rocks and pooling, foam-specked and spent, in a fathomless stillness. Thirty meters up it is already swift but glides, affectionate and smooth, whispering as it cleaves the winter-verdant hills of moss and that same black stone with irresistible carresses. But where I stand at the cascade-fulcrum, the cold dark water moans its babbling anticipation of that eager three-fathom climax, rushing-restraining with profound enthusiasm over a bed gentler than that below the falls but no less unyielding; so, looking up and looking down for a more suitable position though the slicked moss and the river's sighs and my own half-finishedness immobilize anyway, I wonder: are you -- am I -- the rolling black water or the fixed black rocks?

23 May 2007