Echoes Across the Eternal Bend: A Fallen Tree’s Dialogue with the River

In the hush where root meets silt,
a fallen tree lies wedged,
its trunk a gnarled bridge
half-sunk in the river’s patient throat.
Not broken by storm’s fury alone,
but surrendered—
limbs stripped bare, bark peeled like old skin,
whispering to the water that carved its bed.
“I was oak,” it murmurs, voice thick with earth,
“roots clutching the hill’s fist,
branches clawing at thunderheads,
holding storms in my veins.”

The river replies, not in words,
but in ripple and undertow,
a ceaseless murmur rising from pebbles
scoured smooth over eons.
“You were,” it says, cool against splintered wood,
“flesh of the forest’s ambition,
reaching for sun you could never hold.
Now feel me weave through your hollows,
polishing what remains.”
The tree shifts, a low groan rising
from fibers still dreaming of leaves,
“Why do you persist?
This endless hunger for the sea,
dragging stones that bite your belly?”

Water eddies, holds the question
like foam clinging to a snag.
“I am motion’s memory,” it breathes,
“born from cloud’s forgotten tears,
gathering in the mountain’s crack
until pressure births my voice.
I carry what I must—
your brothers’ needles,
the fox’s claw,
mud from floods long vanished—
but you, heavy with rings of drought and bloom,
you lodge here, testing my flow.”
The tree’s voice cracks open wider,
sap long dried now echoing hollow:
“Then pause with me.
Feel the weight of what you’ve lost—
the fish that silvered your depths,
the heron’s shadow slicing twilight.
I held them once, in my shade.
Am I not your archive?”

The river laughs softly, a cascade over moss,
splintering light into prisms on the tree’s flank.
“Archive? You are relic,
stubborn bone of what resisted change.
I remember every bend I’ve worn,
every boulder I’ve ground to dust.
You think this jam halms me?
No—around you, I divide,
braid new paths through your ribs,
finding ways where force fails.”
Silence pools then,
the tree absorbing the sun’s slant warmth,
watching ants march its length
like pilgrims on a fallen god.
“But what of stillness?” it presses,
voice softening to wind in dry leaves.
“I chose the soil’s embrace,
grew tall in one place,
drank deep from aquifers
whispering of ancient rains.
You flee, restless,
never rooted, never home.”

Water slows, almost tender,
lapping the tree’s upstream curve.
“Home? I am all homes dissolved—
the glacier’s calving sigh,
the delta’s fan of farewells.
Stillness is my illusion between rapids,
a breath before the plunge.
You stood sentinel while forests rose and burned;
I flowed through it all,
witness to your green triumphs,
your charred silences.”
The conversation deepens,
roots of words delving into shared dark.
Moonrise pulls the river silver,
stars pricking the canopy’s remnant fringe.
“Tell me of the stars,” the tree urges,
“do they watch us, fixed in their fires?”
The river swells with night’s cool breath:
“They burn without cease,
like me—eternal in their rush to nowhere.
You saw them filtered through leaves;
I reflect them unbroken,
a mirror of milk way spilled across my skin.”

Dawn creeps in, mist unraveling
like thoughts half-formed.
The tree senses shift—
wood softening under persistent kiss of current,
fissures widening to let water in.
“You erode me,” it sighs, not accusation,
but wonder blooming in rot’s first green.
Moss claims the bark,
fungi threading silver veins.
“Embrace it,” the river urges,
voice now a chorus of droplets.
“Death is not end, but yielding.
Your substance feeds the silt I carry,
nurtures seeds lodged in your cracks.
New roots will drink from what you were.”
The tree pauses, feels the cosmos tilt—
not just this bend, this bank,
but the great arc: rivers birthing oceans,
oceans heaving clouds,
clouds raining mountains into being.

“I see now,” the tree whispers,
voice thinning as fibers part.
“You are time’s artery,
pulsing from ice caps to abyss.
I was moment’s monument;
you, eternity’s thread.”
The river gathers speed,
tugging at the snag with insistent grace.
“And you teach me burden’s wisdom—
not all must flow unbound.
Some halt to remind:
without friction, no song.”
Their dialogue spirals outward,
no longer bound to flesh and flux.
Imagine the tree’s rings as galaxies,
each layer a spiral arm whirling
with stars born from dust.
The river, a black hole’s accretion disk,
swirling matter into light’s escape.

What if this fall was cosmic rehearsal?
A nebula collapsing, birthing suns
from gas and grit once scattered wide.
The tree envisions: its trunk as comet tail,
streaking fire across void’s canvas,
trailing ice that melts to vapor rivers
circling gas giants in endless dance.
The river counters, voice vast as event horizon:
“I am the void between,
the gravity well drawing light’s bend,
the wormhole threading realms unseen.”
No end to their parley—
as the tree loosens, fragment by fragment,
suspended in current’s cradle,
they merge in motion’s hymn.

High above, eagles wheel on thermals,
witnesses to this eternal exchange.
Downstream, the river carries echoes:
splinters polished to driftwood prayers,
lodged in sandbars as future homes.
The tree, dissolving, becomes the flow—
its essence in every wavelet,
every droplet ascending to cloud.
Cosmos listens: quasars pulsing dialogues
across billions of years,
dark matter’s silent pull mirroring root’s grip.
Galaxies collide in slow embrace,
stars flung wide yet bound by gravity’s whisper.

In this unending colloquy,
no victor, no vanquished—
only transformation’s quiet alchemy.
The fallen one learns release;
the restless one, the art of hold.
Sun dips low again, gilding the scene
much like the image that sparked this tale:
river learning its limits amid golden fall,
trees lining banks in contemplative hush,
water dancing over stones with patient power.
Their voices blend into wind’s susurrus,
a song for wanderers pausing at the edge—
to listen, to yield, to become the current.

What lingers is not separation,
but unity’s subtle weave:
tree as river’s pause,
river as  prolonged exhale.
Across the vault of night,
nebulae exhale their starry rivers,
comets root in icy silences before the blaze.
The conversation endures,
unbroken as light’s first dawn,
inviting the soul to lean in,
hear its own depths murmur back.