Crystal Creek Road Poem by Hugh Cobb

Meanders: curves left and right
in random sweeps, mirroring its namesake.
Water runs parallel to macadamed roughness,
spills over rocks, smoothing, polishing -
eroding in microns with each molecule's gentle friction
over time past imagining - stones on its
clear brown bottom smoother than
this twisting road I drive. Mountain walls on either side.
Time seems to slip and voices and images from this place's past
fill my mind.

Back before macadam, when road was dirt -
even further back - just a foot worn path
following creek's natural bends and twists
widened over time to accommodate wagons of crops,
mercantile goods or white lightning; as it was
when natives wended their way from ford to ford,
(one above and one below) .
Each step reflecting water's free path
dancing downhill - a celebration;
somehow moving from here to there
despite Nature's whimsy
and mountainside's insistent curve.

To replicate its flow is like a plane
flying a butterfly's random path.
But with patience wrought of Earth herself,
each foot trod step traced this path
morphing into the road it now is.
Yet it still reflects the character and essence
of its source: and that creek still runs pure and clear -
drinkable to slake a dusty thirst now as then.
Times overlap a filmy palimpset, held in simultaneity
in creek's swift, lucid and eternal dream.