Rough Draft...

Standing by the wreck of the Missouri,
she and I were prehistoric, gazing upon the flight of birds,
they whorled up in patterns, let loose their wings,
and fell upon air pockets above the water,
the catfish flopped up on the rocks above the banks,
their fat bellies pulling them back down into the muddy deeps,
the otters on the far banks, burrowed farther into earth,
the autumn breezes beginning to send their signal,
the leadening weight of the season an echo to all passing creatures.

We dreamed for a moment of a life that never was,
but could have been, but might never be, unless we made it so,
the waters, untouched now by clipper, or man, and buoyant,
a tableau, millions of brushstrokes, thousands of thoughts to the wind.
Alone, the waters would pass as they always have, the southbound
current steady at five knots if there were a clock to measure it.
But with us, the river harkened itself, bearing down upon us
in the same way heaven can always be planted, here, now, now.

And in the hours that followed, the silence of that lilting river,
its slow plod, as we drive home in that same silence of which we shared,
fell into our rhythms for just awhile, in the quiet chir of the crickets
somwhere on shore, somewhere in the weeds, the grasshoppers
leaping around cornstalks, the long cut of the skyline, thick beds
of clouds, bordered by the dying sunlight, licking the heavens
a dull gold, a deepening sleeve of orange, the end of all wars,
that now would be the peace that we had promised each other,
that nothing need be said, in this prehistory, by the wreck of the Missouri.