Christ Chooses the Rocks He’ll Use to Cross a River

Wide but not so wide. Dry, ideally.
Mostly dry. He checks each one for wobble; a little
is OK. He likes a little wobble, advancing
the music and the dance of it, a quake
that ends so quickly it feels ancient to him.
But too much slack and he will choose another.
So many things are just about to collapse.

It’s not that he would mind falling, getting
his clothes irregularly soaked, according
to how he fell, how quickly rose. Those streaks

of mud that end in such a neat equator
above his ankles when he removes shoes
and socks by the door. When his mother would make
a face at the extra round of wash, then ask
How was the river?, wetting a cloth to clean
him just until his bath, wiping dry flakes
or still-wet terraces of riverbed,
the smell of frog sleep and disappeared leaves.

He is almost across. He’s stopped, balanced
on a rock he had eyed from the bank as fit for one
foot’s rest, and neighbored by a modest jut

that would be no help on its own, but it’s good
to steady against, as is. So many things
need each other. No, he would not mind
falling in the water. He will probably
go wading after this, look under rocks
for crayfish. But there’s just a kind of magic
to giving in to that last leap, to landing

on the static shore, to having done the thing
he decided to do, to feeling like he flew
over what, for the moment, was not to be touched.