Turned 50 on Monday.  Woke up to this beside my bed, my gift from Bob:

Every day, we sit with the stream.

As the spark of Venus fades into the wakening 

embers of dawn over the field, 

we turn to the path that takes us into the woods, 

threading through the trees, crossing rows of cobble, 

the strewn ghosts of ancient labors, 

padding between the cushioned mosses,

skirting where water seeps and trickles like tears.

 

Every day, we arrive at the stream.

As tree shadows streak the slope, weaving into a tweed 

brocaded with fallen limbs, 

we fold ourselves into the ridge above, 

facing the warming light, eyes scanning the gauzy forest edge, 

pinning the glinting twitch of birds, 

our throats drawing the breath of the forest, 

ears softening to the whispered reveries of the water.

 

Every day, we watch the stream.

As it cleaves its way across the forest floor, resolute, 

yet bending by rocks and swaying through its etched path, 

it scribes its elemental place, 

furling across the earth’s knuckles, 

coursing a determinate path, yet yielding to the terrain 

rather than testing its own will.  

 

Every day, we visit the very same stream.

As we sidle by, we know every riffling cascade, 

pensive pool, and gleeful slide across rocky ledge, 

yet each time, each moment, 

it is an entirely different stream, 

pulsing with new water that has slid by throughout the night, 

slackening its pace in pools to reflect stars 

held in the twined fingers of the trees above.  

 

Every day, we listen to its reinvented song. 

As its brittle cadence chimes in our ears, it sings 

in contented somnolence as the hills release their snowy stores, 

in raucous exuberance after passing storms exhaust themselves, 

in contemplative murmuring when stilled by meditative ice, 

in prayerful whispering in the torpor of summer heat, 

or in ponderous silence as leaves spin in its cupped hands, 

its voice brightest as it surmounts its obstacles.

 

Every day, we follow the stream beside us.

As we return home, along this streak of tarnished silver beneath a sullen sky, 

or this lane gilded with sunlight sifting through hemlock boughs, 

its chorus drifts away, its visage slips beneath the forest canopy, 

and we rejoin the day ahead of us, the charge of needs to be fulfilled, 

saying nothing of our encounter with the stream, 

but imbued with its salve, resonant with its music, 

aware that without it, our hearts would hear only the desultory ticking of time.

 

Everyday, we sit with the stream.              

— Bob Hooper