Down by the Riverside

The bank of the river was flat, grey stone.  Some day the river would cut down deep to form a mighty valley, but today it sat a few feet below the rim of the plain.  Cool, dark water whirled about, flowing down towards the sea, miles and miles away.  There was just the river, the plain, and the man crying on the bank.

He knelt, hunched over, tears soaking his clean-shaven face that was only visible to the water he wept into because of the black veil of hair that cascaded down in strands.  The sun was setting, the heat of the day already gone into the clear sky.  Like the shadow he made that stretched out across the surface of the river, his clothing was a dark black.

No words were said, for how does one plead with a river to give back what it stole?  The water has already gone onward, the water shrugs off a yell, the reflections it shows are only your crying eyes.  If there were a grave, he surely would be there, but a grave requires a body, and a body was not to be found, not from this river.  It was swift, fast, unstopping.  So all that was left to talk to the river was the salt water mingling with the fresh water.

The moon rose to the setting of the sun, pulling itself high above the plain, and yet the man still knelt, waiting.  Either he would break, or the river would relent.  Drifting shadows, slowly in the moonlight, time itself dragged them to and fro through the night.  When tears subsided, the shaking took over, night chill a poor comfort against tragedy.  A poor mimicry of her warm body, a fair one of the river.

He had thought of jumping in, but what use was that?  To be forgotten as well, nobody left to light a remembrance candle, nobody to leave a piece of bread at the doorway for the departed.  If the spirit could make the journey back up the river, would it be kind to run away, to abandon a hope of welcome?  He knew not.  He could not grasp it, he could not escape it.

All he had were the red eyes, the cold wind, the empty house.  Nothing to tie him to the city, nothing to keep him away from the river.  Dawn came, flashing through the veil of hair his hung head draped over red eyes.

The sun rose and so did he.  It walked across the sky, and he walked down the riverside.  When it sank to the horizon, so did his knees sink down to the cold, grey stone of the riverside.  A drink, then vigil like the stars, looking down from the black veil of night.