I look up at the cliffs
but we’re swept on by downriver
the rafts
wobble and slide over roils of water
boulders shimmer
under the arching stream
rock walls straight up on both sides.
A hawk cuts across that narrow sky hit by sun,

we paddle forward, backstroke, turn,
spinning through eddies and waves
stairsteps of churning whitewater.
Above the roar
hear the song of a Canyon Wren.

A smooth stretch, drifting and resting.
Hear it again, delicate downward song

ti ti ti ti tee tee tee

descending through ancient beds. 
A single female mallard flies upstream—

Shooting the Hundred-Pace Rapids
Su Tung P’o saw, for a moment,
it all stand still.
“I stare at the water:
it moves with unspeakable slowness.”

Dōgen, writing at midnight,
“mountains flow
water is the palace of the dragon
it does not flow away.”
We beach up at China Camp
between piles of stone
stacked there by black-haired miners,
cook in the dark
sleep all night long by the stream.

These songs that are here and gone,
Here and gone,
To purify our ears.