A poem I wrote today …

Little Splat

silent and still and slow,
    very slow
        is this what it is like to die?
silent and still and slow,
    very slow?

I am here for joy
    for the joy of emerald water
        pouring and twisting among grey boulders
        churning over drops and plunging into holes and piling up in frothy mounds
    for the joy of the dance
        pas de deux, me and the river
        lean, glissade, pirouette
    for the joy of comradeship
        eight days and eight of us, two thousand miles of road and sixty miles of stream
        paddling and paddling some more, talking paddling and dreaming paddling
    for the joy of the adventure
        Zoom Flume and First Island, Little Splat and Wonder Falls, Wonder Falls!
        launching boat and body over the lip of eighteen-foot Wonder Falls, exult!

and now,
silent and still and slow,
    very slow

not able to breathe, but able to see
    seeing only the subaqueous darkness
not able to move, but able to feel
    feeling canoe and me stuck, stuck between rocks, between foot pegs and saddle
able to think, but silent and still and slow,
    very slow
no panic, no terror, no dread, no self-pity, no despair, no regret
    only silence and stillness and slowness
and watching, watching myself, watching myself from outside myself
    and wondering, wondering, wondering
        is this what it is like to die?

I try again to move
    and I am out

there will be no dying today
    no second-guessing or rueing or wishing myself somewhere else
because I am here
    because I am here
because I am here for joy!

Timothy Ensworth

 

(In April 1991, I traveled to West Virginia with seven other members of the Maine Appalachian Mountain Club whitewater canoeing group. Along the way, we paddled the Indian and Hudson rivers in New York, and Stony Brook and Dark Shade and Shade Creeks in Pennsylvania. In West Virginia, we ran the Shavers Fork of the Cheat, the Middle Fork of the Tygart and Tygart Gorge, the Upper and Lower Big Sandy River, and the Cheat River. This poem comes from my descent of the Lower Big Sandy and a capsize at Little Splat.)