The river keeps many secrets

Yesterday afternoon I watched a piece of driftwood bob in the brown green water from the rail of the ferry. It moved away from me swiftly and I was astounded once again, reminded of how powerful this river is. From the bank, it looks deceptively calm, and when Moby and I walk along the levy in the morning, it is hard not to give in to his obvious desire to be let off the leash so he could run down the embankment, building momentum to leap into the water like he loves to do in every other river we have ever come across together. But I know that the soft waves that lap the shore can carry off dogs and people as easily as they do driftwood and so we stay on top of the levy, grudgingly.

Watching the water take the wood to a final resting place, the location of which can only be guessed at with any level of accuracy by pointing south, I thought about how many logs, people and dogs this river must have claimed for its own.

This is going to sound macabre, but I was intrigued by this thought and later that evening I googled "suicides Mississppi River". The singer Jeff Buckley came up, of course. But technically he drowned in the Wolf River, I think. And technically it wasn't a suicide. We think.

The poet John Berryman committed suicide by leaping from a bridge into the river in 1972. According to some reports, he waved at onlookers on the way down.

Dream Song 14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn, ...


But the result that turned up that I couldn't get out of my mind was the story of two young lovers who flung themselves, hands clasped, from a bridge in Alexandria, MO in 1909.

I thought about Herman and Belva all night. What happened that night to make them jump? I looked and looked but I couldn't find any other information about the couple except for a short notice in another paper that they had been found 3 days later on the bank several miles downriver, arms still entwined. It made me sad. There is so much life to live, and so much gets wasted. What if this is the only chance we get?

This afternoon I got off work early and headed home on a much earlier ferry than usual. As I wheeled my bike off the ferry and rode the first curve that would take me towards home, I looked to my right and saw a young couple walking down the hill toward the Algiers Courthouse.  He had a bushy beard and a dark suit on. She was wearing red flats, a knee-length white dress and a short veil. They were holding hands, and I smiled at them without thinking. They waved in return. They looked so beautiful walking in the sunlight.

I wonder. Do you?