The Creek

He walked out along the creek for a while.

Its water clear as glass; its currents converging and diverging to create scars upon its trembling surface. He placed each step carefully - not to disturb the water and cloud it. He had walked for three miles before reaching the treefall. The bark had sloughed off in great heaps now growing moss, and he could smell the tree’s decay along the banks. Just below, the creek came over a boulder and passed through the air a few feet before crashing back upon itself, forming a small pool where larval salamanders crept along the silt with their feathery gills bellowing. He recalled the poem:

My love said she would marry only me

and Jove himself could not make her care,

for what women say to lovers, you’ll agree,

one writes on running water or air

A log from the felled tree rested diagonally there, one end rooted in the pool and the other against the boulder preceding it. He lay down on it, the bark touching his bare stomach, and cupped his hands against the falling water to wash his face and drink. Then he turned over and lay on his back, his arms dangling at either side with fingertips grazing the pool’s surface; eyes to the cloudless sky, bordered by foliate black. He considered how long it would be before they found him, accounting for each variable as in an equation, and concluded they might not at all. Any intention he had of leaving was gone then.