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The town tries hard and harder, smoothing bridges, adding lights, a crack-proof promise. The old trees cut with trim efficiency. All now slick, speedy, cemented. Once, fort-building nooks called coyote-like along the watching river, any float some welcomed. Now, flower baskets line regimented walks with wildness snipped stringent. It used to be an alley, the bar’s debris dumpster, a place for late night arguments. Slurred truths populated wee hours in smoky mists; a surging municipal underbelly. But that all got covered, branded. It builds distant bank accounts on high-speed schedules. We call in campered tourists, sunscreened, stunned. Eager wallets, pushing plans are gripped hard in puffy, too-clean hands. Eyes glazed like stale, sugared donuts speculate on real-estate’s raging torrent; a forced, candied carnival. Just now a screen-stunned, head-bent youth walks hard on concrete where once he lingered shoeless. Years ago his soul slipped in the river, got snagged on a sweeper, stuck there ‘til the current changes. It’s biding soul time while he’s crammed with plans of muscles and money, eyes voiceless and vulnerable as a vacant puppet. “He too could own land, have money, buy a plan!”. If only, he’s stuffed clean, suited, sterile enough, all soft edges sharpened. They want him a weapon. But in the night the rain came. The waters rising, swelling, spilling banks, releasing lodged souls from tangled binds. I think I saw one floating down the rapids – bobbing Moses-like in the waves, then cradled softly, softly in the eddy’s mothering swirl. The river lays him gently then, her newborn babe, back, back, home to the shores of the loving, living land.