This piece was written during The Imaginative Storm Prompt of the Week session, www.imagibnativestorm.com.
ABOVE THE HAUNTED RIVER
I’ve known the back-and-forth, that old war between what is and what is not. I’ve been at night in November above the mourning river.
I’ve heard the sounds of irritation, the sounds of found dreams floating from the mountain hollers like easy devotions from some church under a full moon with no red roses.
You see red roses in summer, but not in November when long nights grow longer and long trains rumble past soulful forgotten churchyards.
You find no frenzy in those churchyards, only memories like ghosts talking to each other, talking to you, or me, or to the wheelbarrow, the white chickens , or the rainwater.
Okay, let’s get back to the bridge and the November river.
When you flip a coin in a river, you must make a wish. Lay to rest those old cattle calls in the grandmother shade of November nights, in the birth cycle that vibrates a wishful arrival of the longest night of the year. Train long. Ancient long. Forever begging for light, for blood, steel, and the meaning of back-and-forth above the haunted river that says so little, says so little.
