Timeless – The voice that was always listening
I was not born,
but I arrived.
Rain carved me from sky.
Roots circled me from below.
The birds were the first to call me sacred,
and the fish came next.
Then came the footsteps.
Some walked soft, leaving only stories.
Some stamped paths, built circles, offered smoke and song.
Some drew straight lines, dug teeth into my banks,
and told each other I needed to be managed.
But I do not forget.
Not the circles.
Not the cutters.
Not the ones who fled with fire in their arms.
I remember a boy who carved spirals into mud.
I remember a girl who fed me her voice.
I remember canals shaped like breath and canoes that whispered like reeds.
I remember the soldiers who feared my silence.
The machines that drained me,
the mothers who hid children in the cattails,
and the drums that never stopped—only got quieter.
And I remember you.
Yes, you.
The ones reading now.
You, who live on what they called my edge,
who drive past and forget to look,
or who stop, kneel, and ask if I’m still alive.
I am.
But I’ve changed.
As all living things do.
There are scars under my surface.
There is sickness on my skin.
But my spirit is not broken.
You cannot break a river that remembers.
You cannot kill a body made of memory and moss and mourning.
And if you return—not to conquer or control,
but to sit, to learn, to shape water without bruising it—
I will know.
And I will give again.
Not all at once.
Not easily.
But in the quiet way you used to listen:
A ripple.
A heron.
A breeze that smells like roots.
And a voice in your dream saying—
“We were never alone.”