Sound of Water Falling by Nate Pritts

1.

We left the road
behind, moved off
together, glided
between houses
toward the sound
we let guide us:
a hush across the world—
the noise of water
falling

2.

          away from itself
then folding back
again. You can say
everything you wouldn’t trust
yourself to say.
You can walk right up to it.
You can move your body
into it and the image
of yourself shimmers

3.

through the glass of distance.
You know what you see
isn’t a true representation.
You doubt the future
& you doubt the past
which means you have given up,
            have surrendered.
The water comes to ground.
We kept moving
downward, trespassing
across histories, this present
which expands,
a web useless but graceful
in the trailing breeze.

4.

A lung.  We imagine
squares of a slate path
in a grey amoebic pattern,
half buried.
We still found our way.
We didn’t bother to notice
the clouds.  We watched
the light around us
become new light.  Then

5.

we went
back toward the road
where we started.

...

Nate Pritts is the Director and Founding Editor of H_NGM_N (2001), an independent publishing house that started as a mimeograph ‘zine, and he is the author of eight books of poetry, including the recent Post Human (2016) and the forthcoming Revenant Tracer, which won the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award and will be published in the fall of 2017. He lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York state.