The River Tonight and the Sky

No wind in a drizzle, 9 pm; the river is smooth and black like slate or a peculiar tone of gray. A huge heron gray with white wing-tips swoops to the river-side. Trees reflect black, light through blank clouds silver to the west, and a few suds move in still water. Gray, gray! Within this gray are the lost eons, the slow wastes of evolution, the wonder and anquish of animals, tribes of men, and the metamorphosis of tree and rock.

24 May 1981