What the River Says

...that is what I say. Not a good picture, I know, but I was shooting for mood. Straight across this river, the North Umpqua, lies the Umpqua Community College campus, one of my favorite places in this stretch of the beauty of Oregon. This is also, straight beyond this river, the site of one of the worst mass killings in Oregon or America. It's still pretty surreal...sad, incredibly sad, but surreal. 

I thought about the professor, Larry Levine, whose life ended that day. It was reported that his work at UCC, a professor of literature and poetry, was secondary to what he really loved...fishing the North Umpqua River. And I thought about my own life, how my life had changed in the same room where Levine's life ended. I have no answers for that. One of life's great sadnesses and mysteries. 

I've probably posted it before on my photos, but this poem is for all of us who believe in the river, who believe in something greater. This is from William Stafford:

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.



I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.