Inevitable River by Robert Okaji

Transparent beauty, I adore the way
your mind filters and reconstructs patterns,
waves transcending straight lines through 
color-drenched nature and the coming days.

Like a second page cleansed of words,
or a bulldozed path through a mine field,
we start our separate lives together, anew.
Even the winged beings admire us.

Our pasts hover behind,
shadowing our drives through lost towns
and lonesome adolescent dreams,

falling further behind each day, as we
flow forward, inevitable river of we,
opening to the future’s unclear certainties.

____________________________________________________________

Robert Okaji lives in Texas. He no longer owns a bookstore, and occasionally works on a ranch. The author of five chapbooks, most recently I Have a Bird to Whistle (Luminous Press, 2019), his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Claw & Blossom, North Dakota Quarterly, Panoply, Vox Populi and elsewhere.