All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.
TAG BY THE RIVER
They twirled me around
ten times at the edge
of the campground,
then scattered—I
swayed a little before
lunging at them, each one
vanishing into deer brush
by the river, the water
roaring into a still,
deep pool, then
sweeping around a bend,
a phoebe chirping, barely
out of my reach, on a twig
above the shining edge
of the pool and the rapids.
Tempted to forget the game
and swim across, the water
smooth for a stretch,
then pitilessly raging,
I glimpsed my brother,
fifty feet away, scrambling
as if his life depended
on it, and I sprinted
after him, twenty feet
away before he
disappeared into
the brush again, and I
gave up. Again,
I had failed.
As I leaped
across a stream,
my friends seemed
so distant, impossible
to tag. Two feet away,
the water raged, the sun
kindling my ribs,
the river and earth so
peaceful that I felt,
for the first time, one
with the bushes and trees,
aware that my soul
was ballooning, connected
with something vast, unseen—
the great spirit of the earth,
I imagined. I no longer desired
anything else. My brother finally
found me and scornfully
asked where I’d been,
and we marched back to camp
where I glimpsed in the distance
the shining edge of the still pool
and the pitiless rapids.
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