The Green River's End

"Sitting in the boat, I look at red trees and forget how far I've come.
Drifting to the green river's end, I see no one." – Wang Wei, from "Song of the Peach Tree Spring"











The Sunset Trail very few have taken and we are the only ones gliding along on bikes.
It is near dawn and each powder green pocket of the woods swarm by mosquitos.
We pass along fast enough, chasing the last bars of sunlight across the trail, and they cannot land.
All of the cars along the shoreline road have exited the Peninsula.
We watch the round blaze of headlights as they follow their own trail back to hotel rooms.
As all of the people have retreated we hear only the great lake now as our companion
and it laps along the rocky shore as if an enormous snare across a drum.
A few night hawks circle above the old bay lighthouse as we pass it, now asleep, window lids shut.
The old world opens up. Whose postcards had shown men and women from the thirties
gather around a wooden stage up near Nicolet Bay and the children helped to build a fire.
We might hear singing and the crackle of flames from a bonfire as faces lit up like bright moons.
At every old and haggard pine rising up dark as charcoal we found the spirals of silence bloom.
We had thought of living along the blanket of the beach. What morning bird woke us up.