Eventually Heraclitus stepped in the river and drowned. In his mouth they found a ball of water striders so dense, it blocked out the sun. This amulet has been passed down from generation to generation, closely guarded by a select few. Worn in cold waters, it keeps the body from turning blue. Rapids veer from the skin. Waterfalls knot. You pass from shore to shore. Dusk meets you halfway.
kingfisher
wears the river
out
work has recently appeared in Acorn, Contemporary Haibun, Frogpond, The Heron’s Nest, MacQueen’s Quinterly and Modern Haiku. He is the author of a collection of haiku and haibun, How to Disassemble Your Father’s Ghost (Kattywompus Press, 2017), and his haibun story of the same name is anthologized in The Best Small Fictions 2015. With a fondness for whiskey and whippoorwills, he divides his time between the lights of Nashville and the woods of his native Kentucky.
