Climbing Out of the Stream

Waiting for the one last ride back to where it all begins

By Kiefer Pix on iStock (image licensed by author)

One empty seat at the rail.
The downtown café full, just
room for me. I lean on the pitted
metal railing, the passing river
of busyness close enough to touch,
but no one notices another old, gray
headed man sipping wine on a warm
afternoon. A school of business piranhas
passes, swimming to lunch, tastes of blood
in the water making them smile. A father
fish wearing his official tourist uniform
of baggy, wrinkled cargo shorts, too small tee
shirt, belly bulging, pushing a red baby buggy
the size of my first couch, mother
fish brightly fluttering in his wake in
muumuu tent, colors of a Jerry Garcia
drug induced flashback, clunky plastic
shoes named after reptiles… a small girl
wearing a floppy Nemo hat, mom holding
her hand… doesn’t want to lose her in
the rapids at the corner light. Buskers,
hustlers, homeless begging for change, dog
walkers, yoga queens, geeks, and a few
bottom feeders, all caught in the current
pulling them in both directions, the need
to get somewhere, now, keeps them all
swimming against the tide… and I sit,
eyes wide, watch, like an ancient turtle on
the bank basking in the sun, my antediluvian
leathered shell warm to the touch, scratched
and gouged by a long life of surviving
in the river of man… but no need to swim
today, no need to be anywhere but here…
tired of a lifetime…