The river is opaque
and fogged-over like sea glass
unpierced
by even the sharpest sunlight,
its layers
amorphous clouds
of sediment and algae,
almost brown,
almost green,
almost orange at the edges,
slipping past you
in the way of wind,
catching on logs
long buried,
their arms reaching
and rough
and barnacled,
their arthritic branches
prone to birds,
to dark-eyed juncos
and crows
and kinglets,
and the long-legged heron
who waits to catch fish,
knife-like,
in its beak,
and around the bend
the tunnel
whose concrete walls
smell strangely
like damp wood,
where the drum of the freeway
pummels down
on your head,
after which
your eyes soften
to the sunlight
to the wapato plants
to the wheat-like grasses
that form a curtain
around a lawn chair
hidden on the banks,
and above it all
the god of the river,
the Douglas fir
that leans diagonal
over the water,
its roots clay-braided,
strained,
its branches scooped forward
like locks of hair,
its shadow
a thin bridge
across the water,
waiting.