1.
Seeking motion enough
to steady me,
I come to a creek.
Hollows under the stones
tap my ears--
approaching a place
where water turns
downhill,
I catch it
falling.
2.
Right amid the city houses
I found a solitude
too long deferred.
Among ruins
that belong-- storm-bruised
stones, trampled mud,
the water-buried
yellow leaves of a willow--
I came upon the unlatched
world.
3.
When I was a child down by a creek
I wandered off the trail
upstream,
leaping rocks with trusted feet
& with the feet my body
over water
traveling under me,
its confident voice
telling every shaft & socket
under the rocks.
4.
This is the place deer came
to hear declarations of water
turning over itself,
to forget a moment
danger, panic, quick wheeling around,
to soften, reach,
put wild lips to another wet motion,
to drink,
taste
everywhere this water has been,
to become
part of everywhere
it will go.
5.
The stream shrinks daily--
its voice less than it was
sinks further between the stones,
moving underground
toward the end of summer
when there is no rain.
O let me be its downhill
lullaby through the opened windows.
Unmoored from day,
rush me through shadows
dense enough to bear night-thickened
melodies.
Unfetter a covert music:
not the written,
but how
it resounds.
Christina Hutchins
Poet Laureate, Albany, California
Gratitude for the Five Creeks restoration workers. Labor Day picnic 2009.