Like tattered wings, clouds veil the winter sun this morning–as if it was possible to smoother the source of light. In the half-shade, El and I continue to walk on the river bed that the tide has drained. Our footmarks create indented landmarks for now seemingly engraved until the restless swirl and swell of river tide sweeps them away. I sigh over my foreboding of the loss, what I thought would be our guide when we get back, “Why doesn’t anything stay the way it is at all?”

He answers without looking at me, “You sound like a three-year old, you know, when everything adults say is met with a ‘why’.”

I hold back my quip, keeping it as close to my inner hearing, as mute as my heartbeat. “We all do have the heart of a three-year old. We ask questions constantly because some things do need answers like why moments hardly ever stay.”

As if hearing me, El goes on, “if any moment at all stays, we would be frozen like stalactites. But these soon melt, too, as you know. Or would you disagree and tell me about stalagmites?”

“Yes, what about stalagmites?”

“You know the answer, don’t you? They change, too, indiscernibly as it takes hundreds of years like the canyons to show the tiniest of marks. Nothing stays, little girl!”

“Of course, I know. I know.”

The rustle of water rushing back and forth on our feet, lapping its way back and forth from the belly of the river takes over our voices. El looks farther up the river where a barge shimmers against the sun that has since emerged from the clouds. My eyes trail his as he scans a horizon gaping to the sky. We trudge on, the sand weighing heavier on deeply soaked turns of the river bank.

I comb silken patches we skim along our walk, noting more signs of life once, now emptied even decayed in skeletons of mollusks and shards of clam shells. Washed over among them though are some stones that shine, showing off it seems, delicate veins, inimitable hues of blues, greens, rusts and grays. I secretly covet and keep snapshots with my mind of what seems like a standstill in their moment, aware of my stubbornness for impermanence.

I am stubborn about moments, meaningful slices of life like what El and I have together. Nothing extravagant like floating on the ocean at dawn to see how light plays on Alaskan icebergs. Or a distant trip to the Northern Territories where on a hotel balcony, we could watch the Aurora Borealis fling sparks. I wish nothing more than quiet moments like now to freeze if only for a breath. I catch El’s eyes light up with another thought.

He breaks the rhythmic sound of the water. “Amazing how water can hold up tons of steel, isn’t it?” He hasn’t taken his eyes off the barge.

“Some laws whose author mankind has been attempting to fathom to circumvent, these are what hold the universe up or what you perceive as moments together. Imagine if in its interminable rotation the sun stops!”

“I understand,” I say in a whisper but I regain my voice to state, “And I do understand how the constellations stud the universe without flinging at us on this blue dot, a tiny planet called Earth, in the infinite vastness. I understand why the universe unless in parts decayed and discarded cannot cease. Where parts die, the interminable movement fills it up and renews it. Should we say then that this is what eternity or infinity is all about—constant change, movement?”

“Hahaha! You’re not a little girl after all. You’re thinking too deeply. Should we turn into philosophers now? But seriously, there’s something else beneath the seeming restlessness in the universe that you and I have been skimming.”

I wait for his answer though I have it. My shadow has faded into grey. The sand has dulled as it has lost the shimmer the fullness of the sun has lent because clouds earlier drifting, now veil it again—those tattered wings.

Movement. We’ve covered half of the river bank way past the copse of blackberry brambles that open up for an entrance; the horizon now seems only halfway farther within reach. I stop and facing the river, stretch my arms palms up as if to hold in balance the universe I imagine. On childish impulse, I raise one leg exhilarated that I don’t tilt—the sand has sucked up my feet. Gravity keeps me rooted and unless I bend back halfway my body length, I won’t fall.

“Balance is the answer to why the constant movement,” I shout with the wind.

El grabs my shoulders and pulls me backward. I fall in his arms as he says, “Equilibrum. Nothing in this universe, in this Life stagnates because the essence of it is constant movement. But in the constant flow, nothing is lost because in movement the exact point or the moment of which you’re so anxious about is the balancing point, the point of equilibrium.”

I feel his breath on my nape. I continue his line of thought, “That’s where it happens then, the significance of a moment, right at the heart of a moment whose nature is movement.”

“And those points accumulate to keep the balance against those uncertainties yet to come. You’re right in wanting to keep a snapshot of each moment so that when you step into the next, which is unknown, you hold your balance with what you have in your hands, namely, a moment you’ve kept.”

“Like memories of our meeting, and of the picnic when you slipped an engagement on my finger, huh? I float back to those moments, you know, when your business trips to the Okanagan take weeks and you can’t manage to send a word and the world flows in blank pool.”

“Hmmm…” he takes me in his arms.

Our moment has changed. We have changed from seeming antagonists flinging questions back and forth to the friends and lovers that we are. One more moment in our lives that began as formless as emotion or thought, as restless as clouds or the tides, has been clinched in a point of balance we have moved into in our walk by the river bank. For me, it is one more moment to keep against tomorrow’s moments I cannot see.

We turn back, our hands clasped, our shadows braiding. The sun has slipped away from those tattered wings again as brightness swarms even among the ivy in the copse.

First published in Timeless Spirit
Copyright 2011 by Alegria Imperial