In bow of the boat, air rushed fast over Kiely’s form, in press and blow over front and face as she looked forward in sight of path and chosen line ahead; and then, turning back, the wind on back and a pocket of stillness made for breath and rest behind in body’s break as she gazed aft on wake and trail of course over rippled reservoir behind.
On bank where they held near, limestone bluffs rose white and weathered from water’s edge where stand of fossil-timber shone; tops broken out in exposure to sun and sky while trunks and lower branches stayed complete, covered in water’s guard, and only revealed, hidden hazards made seen, in seasons of aridity when waters fell and depths became shallows once again.
As boat careened, Kiely looked back, the white trail in turbulence of prop and the narrow v of boat’s wake spreading outward in momentum, weakening in sign and strength until stilled again into the water’s face and, absent sign, the reservoir seemed empty.
Facing past, she looked down, adjusting sandals on her feet, broad straps loosened until sandals fell to floor and feet worked free; web-tanned pattern over tops, first summer-skin sign, softened in contrast from barefoot days, since, spent in sun.
She stared at her tops of feet, the pattern that they shone, then covered back away as sandals returned to feet.
She looked to the water. It was dark, opaque; the only way she’d known the branch of reservoir to be; but she’d heard stories of the way it was before the dam: clear stream with tall bluffs and cliffs, where you would float as river carried, never knowing what you might catch in its holes and riffle runs when river widened and water shallowed across stone bed unmoved by water’s run.
She looked forward once again, on the limestone bluffs beside who fell in further hide beneath the water’s clouding cast.
She wondered how they would have been, how they might still be, if the dam was never built and the river still ran free; its waters clear and not the cloud they had become; a cloud, not of mystery, but common obfuscation, suspension of sediment that had no where to run and wash clean.
The boat slowed, wake weakening as motor idled down, and the air held in it the low scent of stagnation; a scent that is a reservoir’s own, just as cities hold, too, when lived too dense, populations people that never leave or move or change but stay—confined to reservoirs of fixed thought and slow silting in until all that’s left are fossil-remnants where life once grew when the waters recede and effects of artificial confine are left exposed to truth and view.
There are elements in every place that hold and die this way.
She didn’t want to become one. She didn’t want a dam, to hold and silt with what was meant to flow and carry through; to carry clouded waters meant as clarity but changed by trying to hold and keep what God and nature guide away.
Sometimes, what appears grand on face, is mostly empty in its depths; and the simple shallows that seem little bear much for they keep only what they are meant to hold and, by such, live with a richness and a vibrance open-shown; not cloud and shadow of never intended depths.
She looked from bank back down to feet, freeing again from sandals as she moved her painted toes of blue like open coral sea.
She spoke nothing of her thoughts, but let them drift from presence into somewhere else away.
She had her depths, but did not wish the clouded waters. Contemplations moved her, and in mind, she let current carry free as toes moved like dance of windblown ocean waves.
Man makes many reservoirs, but she would not be one.
Her contemplations carried free as eyes moved again to the tops of limestone bluffs, and she wondered how they must have been not all that long ago before the reservoir contained and changed its valley of life; vistas and wonder traded for cloud and stillness, as living verdure ossified into hazards of resentment.
She would not become a shade of self, clouded and slowly silting—dying—from what she was never meant to bear or dam away.
In decided resolve, a levity arose; a clarity as she danced her wavetop toes.
She smiled on her tops of feet—toe color-dance and pattern shaded skin—as mind carried free.
She dreamed the river as it once had been and still should be. She left her mind to drifts in daydream carrying as and where it may; happy in simple shallows that held much life, waters of clarity and not cloud, and upon them an excitement for mysteries: what she might find, carried as water flowed, beyond every new and waiting bend.