WATER COURSE WAY is a poem of the dream we still carry: to go all the way from Source to Mouth of the Mississippi River...just two summers from now...we'll be ready, of course, tho we are always going to be less than ready...it is a long, long, long journey...it will be what it will be - a Canoe Trip of a Lifetime...more....

WATER COURSE WAY

I am on a
water course way

resting quiet like
ms Ophelia
on her lily pads
only not dead no
quite alive

letting the river
carry me down
where the water
never crosses twice

not resisting
not helping neither
not going anywhere
twice just like
river courses

I am going
down river with
a water man
who loves river ways
more than any other
man I've ever
been with

we are paddling
and being tired and
hot and even-tempered
summer day river
bends and bends

I've learned to bend
like any river way
around life and love
around every snag

an expert fish
eyes wide open
to the truth
under the current

in the shade and deep
waiting for the dry fly
that I will snap
that will take me home

there are brilliant
water course ways
lives like symphonies
of rivers crashing
into willing and
wild seas

I am only one
little river going
down and down
I have met another
we will go into the
big muddy into
the swollen delta
into the dark gulf
into the sea

I turn and sigh
and kiss the river
the river man
and the paddle
the canoe the
banjo the guitar
the songs we sing

on this river
this water course way
this river

this river