The Narrow Place Where the Cottonwoods Grow

Felt like a little creative writing this morning. Started out as a poem, morphed into a scene. I might explore further and see if it won’t turn into a prologue.

On an arid eastern slope

In wilderness far remote

Of tumbled boulders, narrow pine

Cascades, drop by drop

Freshets carving rock

The old clear river twines

A sylvan glen, silvery thread

Cottonwood hemmed

Past a cabin lost to time.

At the cabin window burns a lamp. Beside the lamp sits an old man. The old man lifts his gaze. His bright eyes seem out of place in their shadowed sockets, as if some youthful wish still burns there; the lamp worn and rusted but not yet run out of fuel.

Not yet, but soon.

His eyes moisten, reflecting twin images of river and cottonwoods, mountain and pine. But behind those sad eyes, in some distant autumn long gone by, a clearer image reflects on the tired mind—an image of a boy and girl skipping along the riverbank hand in hand, both lanky-limbed and shaggy-haired, with sun-kissed cheeks and hopeful smiles not yet turned by the passage of time.

They come to rest against the trunk of a black cottonwood, and there, beneath the golden leaves, share a hesitant and tender kiss. The boy fishes a small clasp knife from his pocket and together they carve in the furrowed bark: their names and their vows, Forever, for all who might pass by to see. Then they skip on with arms entwined into all that life ahead. Their joyous laughter rises in the cool air to mix with the river’s timeless hymn, and never before or since has a happier harmony been visited upon mountain valley or foothill glen.

And now, at the cabin window, as sometimes happens in solemn moments like these, the relentless gears of time pause; just briefly, just long enough for the ledger of a life to reconcile accounts—the fragile hopes, the quiet regrets, the precious dreams, all leaching away from his tired eyes like rainwater to join the memories that fill these rivers and flood these streams.

The old man stirs with a sigh, his fingers searching the shadows beside his chair. No hand to clasp there, only polished stock and cold steel. His gaze settles at last on the ancient tree and faded vows, obscured by moss, by fire-blackened bark, by decades and disease—the folly of forever finally lost behind a veil of eventide and tears.

The moment is marked by a flash at the cabin window and the shotgun’s sharp report.

A leaf falls, flutters.

Wintles in the rapids.

Is swept past the cottonwoods.

Swept from the scene.

Now night descends.

By and by, the lamp flickers and dies. All is in darkness now, only the sound of water running over smooth stone. And maybe, just maybe, caught somewhere high in the shivering leaves, between this world and the next, heard faintly, heard fading, heard as if in a dream, the distant echo of youthful laughter skipping down the lonesome river on a gentle and vanishing autumn breeze.

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An audio recording of this essay can be found here:

Audio: The Narrow Place Where the Cottonwoods Grow