Gilded Banks

The river does not argue with the land.

It has been here long enough

to know exactly where the earth

will open and where it will hold.

From this height it looks inevitable—

that long, living curve,

strong enough to take whatever the sky pours

and still keep its own shape.

Powerful not because it shouts,

but because it never once

forgot the way home.

That gold is you.

Not decoration.

The late light finding the water

and deciding it belongs there.

The whole length of us

lit from the inside

because you are in it.

We did not invent this current.

We only recognized it—

the way two banks

that have never met

still know how to make a river

between them.

Ancient because it fits.

Ancient because nothing

has ever needed to force it.

I look down and see the same thing

I feel when you are near:

something that has been traveling

a very long time

and is still, somehow,

just beginning.