Thought Tapestries

Always leaving, never gone —
that’s the brook, holding its shape
while the water runs out from under it,
one crest built fresh each second
from a river that owes it nothing.

Above me, its cousin does the same trick backward:
forming at one edge, unmaking at the other,
never once arriving,
never once leaving empty-handed.

What is going on here —
is that a trick, or is it my eyes
speaking a truth my mind’s too slow to hold?

Tomorrow I’ll walk this way again.
The brook will still be bending light the same,
but not this bend. The cloud will still be
almost-becoming something,
but not this shape.

I stood at the water and asked it to stay.
It didn’t refuse.
It just went on being new
in the one spot it never left.