Picture: Landscape With River by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
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River, unnamed, blank-blue
On every map and brain;
River, misnamed in the illusion
Of elsewhere and afterwards.
When will it end?
When does the water end?
Everpouring, as if out of a dream.
And now that it’s afterwards,
Before seems a bit more real
Than the next afterwards might seem to be.
But that doesn’t make you free,
And why should you be?
An idea, an ideal,
Drowned in swift black waters,
Bashed by herds of stones,
Chilled with beautiful quenching.
Meaning is a gift, I suppose:
Not of the sort you receive, yet
Of the sort you give
To your dream
And that, perhaps, will set you free.
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Herons