You are on the river. On a gravel bar. Dressed in waders and wading boots, layers of fleece underneath and a warm beanie on your head. The day is chill, but it is dry. The sun reaches through the branches of alders, maples, hemlocks, spruces, and firs. The light warms you. Your work warms you. You have been there for some time, gaff in hand. On the bank behind you is your boat. Beside the boat is a pile of your catch. You keep your eyes upstream. When you see one making its way down to you, you get ready. You step into the water, balance against the current on the cobble, reach out with your gaff. There. Hooked it. Easy. You bring it back to the bank. Place it in the pile. Back to the water you go. You are catching z’s.
Each z looks just like its namesake, rigidly wiggly. Going this way, then turning forty-five degrees and going that way. That way then turning forty-five degrees again to go this way. They all do this. They all look the same. All turn back on themselves to decide the best way is forwards. They must. How would they know otherwise?
Their turning makes it easy for you to catch them. Your pile is getting quite large. In the pile, the z’s interlock with one another like one big, convoluted hand hold. It is sweet how they tangle. Z’s smell of lavender and chamomile and peppermint. They coo and whimper like an old dog who’s had a good life. They seem full of life, unmoving as they may be, unmoving if not by the river’s flow at your feet. You know, really everything is the river. Every thing is the river.
Every drop of dew backlit from the sun on the tips of branches, dangling down moss. Every tree standing tall and every tree that leans. Every inch of ground from your feet up to the ridgelines so high above you in the forest you can hardly see them. Every wisp of cloud in the sky above. Everything is the river. Your pile of z’s. You.
You have made a good catch today and the planet has shifted so that the sun’s light is not so warm now. You pack up the z’s into the base of the drift boat and drag it back into the current and jump in. You float down the river and a kingfisher rattles and a water ouzel dips and an otter scurries and a bald eagle perches. You run the rapids and the z’s bounce around in the boat and water splashes your face and that touch is sublime and then one then two then three z’s jostle up and out of the boat into the water and float on down the river alongside you in the boat and you don’t mind because you are all the river anyways.
You reach a deep pool and see the z’s outside the boat settle down to the bottom, so deep your gaff could never ever reach. The angled sun light sometimes hits through the water right and those z’s and little particles of sand sparkle as they descend. You look into those depths and glide on by. There will be more rapids, more pools. The river goes on and on and on.
You will beach your boat eventually. You think of the people you will give z’s to. Those in dear need. Those who do not get to see the river near enough. It may be temporary, but the z’s will return them to where all belong. To deep forests and deep pools. To gliding water and sliding sunlight. To eagles and otters and ouzels and kingfishers. To gravel and cobble and sand.
