Stopping in Redwoods

beside a milky green river, 
frigid with fleet air and spotlit with hot light spilt 
from dark-flanked clouds
the hand happens over the skin of river rocks

no other coarseness 
so silken, except perhaps the song of whale bones 
against an awe-stung palm

the song of snow, 
run and spun with silt-lade rains
into this steep curve riven
between deep redwoods

the song of souls
in which our bodies exist, allowed to be 
however small or fractured and also
meld faultlessly into clear and gold
where shore stones become river stones, 
in which we are chest-deep in green river muscle
before it has even touched our soles, choir members in the current
without ever moving from this warm rock that carries us,
pauses us inside a journey.