So, My Mom Wrote a Thing

So, my mom is a total boss, and she is an amazing writer. She wrote this beautiful lyric, silly, and wonderful piece. It is, honestly, one of my favorite things she is written. She showed it to me first in paragraphs, and reading it in my head, I knew that this piece of prose was a poem who just needed shape! So, she and I talked, and I asked her real Aladdin style, "Do you trust me?" She said yes and I put in a line break here and an indent there. These are all her words, and images, and moments; I just gave it some shape. With no more pomp and even less circumstance, here is "The River" by Mary Botsford.

The River

Eternal, yet fleeting,

unchanged and ever-changing. 

The waters bounce and bumble over rocks

and stumble and tumble over waterfalls. 

But mostly it serenely flows by over the depths. 

But the thing is,

from one instant to the next,

the river is continually evolving. 

The H₂O particles going by this instant

are not the ones I will see in the

next nano-second,

or the next

or the next. 

The river will never be the same.

This riverbed was created eons ago

(epochs ago? I’m a bit fuzzy on my geological time). 

Created by glaciers or floods or God’s great design.

At least the riverbed,

or the path if you will,

is unchanging. 

Look at any map from a hundred years ago. 

It’s right there! 

My river is right there on the map

and right here at my feet. 

Right where it has always been. 

Ah, but naysayers will say,

Look at the oxbow of some rivers.

That’s where some river either

got pissy at having to drive the same commute every day,

or perhaps the water wanted to frolic and play in the field like Ferdinand the Bull.  But, I digress. 

I’m kind of fuzzy, too,

on why the river didn’t just

pull itself together and get back on track. 

But apparently sometimes it just can’t,

and thus we have oxbows. 

Personally, I think the fish are kinda

jazzed about them, the oxbows, I mean.

They don’t have to just swim

up or down the river…

they can swim a racetrack if they want to. 

What kid did not love crawling around in

crazy circles if they were lucky enough

to grow up in a house with connecting rooms? 

We had such a house when my girls were babies. 

We called it the Circus Maximus, and it was stupid fun. 

Even our dog, Callie, would romp along the C.M.

as we crawled and chased each other. 

Sometimes he, being a Great Dane and all,

would knock over the littlest one, but still. . . 

crazy fun. 

Back to the fish, see why I think they are kinda jazzed about it? 

And just think, Dory

(you know, from Finding Nemo)

 would get back home with every completed swim

around the Circus Maximus. 

Just outside my door, the river is serene,

then tumbling,

then bouncing

and bumbling

all within a very short distance. 

The water flows by constantly,

but it is not a constant. 

Each drop of water is very fleeting,

never to pass this way again. 

Ok, I know the loop thing of

evaporation and clouds and then rain-- 

Nature’s Circus Maximus. 

So maybe that raindrop has been here, after all.

It is both ancient and new. 

A dear friend has a saying, “both-and.” 

It took me years to get it. 

“Both-and” instead of

win-lose,

either-or,

us-them. 

A way of looking at life with all of its contradictions.

Straight ahead or swim the racetrack awhile.

My kids tease me sometimes,

Ok, land the plane. 

Like, get to the point. 

I don’t know the point except

that these words needed to

bumble

and

stumble

their way out. 

Walking along the river, I feel a great need

to express my joy from having

this beautiful river for a

neighbor. 

I feel a tug to ponder it as both

fleeting and timeless. 

To ponder my love for the water as a

constant, but ever-changing. 

Same as the object of my affection.                                                  

Both-and. 

Eternal and fleeting. 

Contradictions and constants. 

The River.                 Life.                Me.