I go to the river and place my ear within her. I listen for her heart, the beating heart of the river-- wise from the stones and the reeds and the perseverance. I bow my head and listen for what role I should play, listen for instructions. Before long, I receive them. “Help me to run free,” she says. “Help me to run free.”

Plastic. Like the unspoken incident in every family nobody wants to talk about-- flowing into houses and clogging up drawers with its permanent fragility. Pieces break into smaller pieces, and into smaller pieces. Was that one cup of water worth 10,000 years of permanence? I see a green string and realize it isn’t string at all but plastic grass from a child’s Easter basket. Reeds snag around it like an event in the news until it grows into a clump visible from the passing freeway. I dig the plastic seed out of the center of each clump and think about tumors.

I go to the river and I listen. What can I do? What message do you have for me today? Let me hear you. Let me clean you. One little person against a tidal wave, but I will do what I can. We all can do what we can.