River Woman Poem by John Beaton

Did you ever fall in love with a river
and feel her sinews slide across the land?
Did her undercurrents ever make you quiver
and suck you down and down
through breathless dreams to drown
in turbulence of bubbles and glistening sand?

Is she the wild Stikine or Tatshenshini?
Is she the summer-silked Similkameen?
Is she the lithe long-legended Homathko?
Are her eyes the glacier melting turquoise-green?

Did you ever let her flowing sweep you downstream
and lose your stone-held footing in the spate?
Did she flush you through a canyon on a sunbeam,
sluice raceways through your mind,
careen you fast and blind,
then glide you down her pools, now so sedate?

Were you ever cradled softly in her valley,
borne on a straining sheet of shining light,
turned slowly in a silent swan-like ballet
rocks sliding by below,
the land an upstream flow,
your thoughts a swirling haze of green and white?

Yes, she's the wild Stikine and Tatshenshini.
Yes she's the summer-silked Similkameen.
Yes she's the lithe long-legended Homathko.
Her eyes are the glacier melted, turquoise-green.