The water turned curious as the boat approached. Before it entered I wondered what would happen to it. Would it skim the surface turning the water into a thousand ripples. The boatbuilder had tried to make it as specified when asked by the strange man who had entered his shop explaining what he needed. It was a conversation difficult to understand. He was long past his expiration it appeared. Tall and lost for words as he spoke, it was as if the words themselves had already turned into his request. Had already been bent and brayed into sounds far off and fettered into another world. I was trying though in a corner of the shop watching this man speak. Trying to understand why he sought to have this boat made. The boatmaker appeared perplexed and finally and rapidly told the wayward gent he’d try. The afternoon light was receding through the boatbuilder’s window as the man turned to leave with a slight grin on his face. I’ll be waiting for your call. Was this then the completed boat. One that could bend and bray. The sounds themselves finding another place in water twisted and turned into a vortex for the boat to enter. Or was it the water itself the boatbuilder had discovered. Of course I had seen this before, reflections from water no longer quiet. Things within disrupted. Trees and people on the surface transformed into the water’s hold on them. The water’s movement catches its host and performs. The man in the shop wasn’t asking for this though. He wanted the boat made for another reason. The curvature of rain is about to beat on my face. I hear it as a paddle boat I once traveled on. The sound of water slipping by me. It wasn’t intense back then, no it was soft and just a mellow parting of the stream. I sat on that boat for it seems like such a short time, Nirvana was with me speaking softly. She was music, forming a chorus around the water. Turning the blue to gold. Where has that chorus gone. The rain pounds inside me and over the city I search for gold around a depleted once bosky forest. A long time ago to remember. Copyright S. Kamber