It’s the water, though, or the freeze of it, its icelife, its slushy rush as the two of them can never again become separated: the water flowing from the water stilled…no matter its state, the water’s it: the model, in that it’s everyone’s and yet it’s no one’s, too, and how the heifer — it refuses to ford. We stand at the edge of the slick, as it leans us over to lick, slaking its thirst, a quick lapping melt. O to have a tongue, even if leatherette. At its first lick, however, the burden of its bend, it drops, flattens, luxuriously redrugged, shagged…I should’ve kept it to sell or trade: its limbs splayed out in every direction north, east, flat, dead. I dismount by standing up on its carcass, walk around my moribund ride. And the river. How you cross is you have to wait for the sign — there’s nothing mystical about it, however: the sign’s petrified driftwood, or metal. It floats through the moat, floats around and around the moat, on a slow slog with the current. I wait and it comes. It comes fluming past icefloes, its edges shearing off hunks, here it is swirling and knocking and turning around. When it finally nears, is directly across, I step down, it’s only one step to the slab: not tempting to test but a plunge, then to spring up from my fare, passing quickly…thinking, it’s impossible to know depth without falling — how I won’t make that mistake ever again (falling and falling and).
