Me too, but the stream is enough

The Story of My Life
~ Jennifer Michael

Each day goes down in history, wets its feet,
bathes in the clear or murky stream,
drinks deep, comes out to join past days on the other bank.
We go in with the bathing day, every morning,
brace the shiver on our skin, taste the slaking of thirst,
find footing on mossy rock. Climb out with sleep.
Waking, we're back on the first bank,
wading with a new day into the kaleidoscopic water.
Days far from either bank are barely seen and seem unseeing.
There is no recording of them that knows the cold and quenching of their moment in the water.
Yet I cannot let them go,
nor bearth strong suggestion formed by their fading figures
that they have let us go
and that those coming cannot be foretold anything actual of water, flesh, or stone.
Publisher holds out a large envelope
says, Sorry.We can't publish your autobiography.
Man sighs, says, Story of my life.
All these words, then, are only for the stream?
The stream is everything?
The stream is not enough?
The specters on the banks are deaf but listening?