In Which the River Makes Off with Three Stationery Characters

The river beckons the lumberjacking beaver and spawning chinook salmon to capture its currents, to countervail its flow. Befurred and befinned they dance to its gurgling song but do not yield to the flow, living for their time as dissenters, laboring at cross-purposes against currents as frantically stationary characters in their water world - "there is music that will dissolve your anchors, your sanctuaries, floating you off your feet, fetching you away with itself... until it spills you into a place whose dimensions make nonsense of your heretofore extraordinary spatial intelligence." In the life and tides of the river, only the reflection of the moon remains constant, bobbing along to its own celestial tune. In this delightful essay from The Iowa Review, Amy Leach captures the eternal rhythms of an ancient, aquatic serenade.

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