Into the Sun

Have you ever imagined you’re the first person to see a place?

That you’re the first human to walk these shores, to follow the curving shoreline, to see the sunrise hit its western edge? The sun bestowing warmth and color. The first to see the water slipping past. Its cold power, silent, moving without permission from anyone or anything. No human to control it. No human could even begin to.

To wonder where it goes.

No Google Maps.

Nothing but a whispered myth: the river goes into the sun.

Is there a waterfall downstream?

What kinds of fish are down there? Their white bellies low against the soft river rocks, slimy with fuzz, waiting for the water to warm, for the hatch, so they can do what they were born to do.

To be the first to touch the face of this water. The first to taste its peaty, nutty snowmelt on your tongue. The first to wade into its belly, the rocks shifting beneath your weight, the current pushing against your legs.

Sometimes I’d like to just cup a handful of it and not think of documenting it.

Just pull its coldness into my body.