ask the river

The babbling brook, turns into a stream of conscious thought.

It bends, at ninety degrees; only to double back after a few hundred steps.

I reach in, feeling my way through; the icy water sloshing in my boots.

I pull out a stone.

Shaking my wrist a few times to sling off the excess water, I put the rock up to the light.

I see entire galaxies within.

Millions of stars, eons of experimentation in astrophysics held within.

Drying the smooth surface reveals even more decadent secrets – the colors!

Hues of emerald, alabaster, and deep rust; a sign of the minerals deposited sometime between the time of discovery, and when our ancestors first departed the primordial soup.

I ask the river, where do you go from here?

It always replies, no matter what the question.

The answers inevitably bubbling up to the surface.