Where the River Outlasts Us

A poem on beauty, absence, and the wound of arriving after the door has closed.

You stand where the cliff ends.

Not falling.

Worse.

Held.

Below you, the river keeps
its one long sentence moving
through stone, reed, evening,

water saying nothing
and never finished.

The sky has opened
with its terrible patience.

Clouds move apart

as if revealing
what was already gone.

Here, perhaps,
some god once leaned
one bright hand on the world.

Here, perhaps,
the air once broke
under wings.

Here, perhaps,
the dead were visible
for one last moment,

crossing the ford
with light still caught
in their faces.

But you have arrived
after the door.

The ground is real.

Your hands on the rail,
real.

The grass bending under wind,
real.

The river taking the last gold
from the sun
and carrying it away,

real.

That is the cruelty.

Not that beauty leaves.

That beauty stays
after everything it seemed
to promise

has withdrawn.

You look until looking
becomes a wound.

The world does not answer.

A bird turns once
above the darkening water
and vanishes

without haste.

Evening continues.

The cliff cools beneath your shoes.

Somewhere below,
the river touches stone
with the same indifference

it gave to kings,
pilgrims,
animals,
children not yet born—

all of them standing here
for one brief hour,

believing the view
had opened for them.

It had not.

It opened.

That was all.

And still
you cannot turn away.

Because to know
where you are standing

is to feel the whole earth
beneath you

and the whole vanished world
beside you,

almost touching,

shining

where no hand
can enter.