The river heaved our boat on its back.
I loved how the narrowness of my life
opened into that prairie of waves, big sky.

One evening we saw the sun’s last rays
lift an island from the water; rock and pines
floated mid-air, unreachable mirage hanging

like a painting of Saint John on Patmos dreaming
his Revelation: horsemen and scorpion warriors,
sulphurous clouds blackening the skies,

the end of human history revealed—
the river of the water of life flowing down to us
from that place of no more weeping, no tears.