Spencer Overlook
There is mud-water today and flecks of light coming off the clouds onto the surface, the Ohio River bending to Pennsylvania one way, to the Mississippi the other. Here, one slice, the cool winds blowing northeast against the current. The sun on the water leaves pools of white in shelves of ice slivers, but it is autumn, no where near that cold, and therefore a trick of the sun.
A teenager a little further down the brick wall we sit on to watch, eat, read — he lifts his younger brother, stands him on the brick and says, “King of the world.” We are all kings here, lucky for this day from this place as if we are on top of a mountain. Below, a long shadow takes over the white pools, a long cloud falling behind the sun or maybe it is the sun falling and the cloud rising into vanishing.
It is a day of exchanges. Sun to cloud, river to light. The boats turning to catch shadows. But the boats are even slower than the sun and come away empty into blinding ribbons of current. Or they are overtaken, all of us, by the shadows.
These clouds move like glaciers would if they were above us drifting, refusing to sink down. No we are more like glaciers, thick with water, weighted to this point of the earth watching the afternoon shift and break us free from ourselves. But I like to think of the clouds as glaciers, free of gravity, moving wherever they want.