Route 66

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A bench possesses very few options.
It cannot follow the river
when the Meramec rises beyond its banks.
It cannot seek shade in July
or shelter in January.
It cannot complain about mosquitoes,
cottonwood fluff,
fallen branches,
or the weight of snow.
Someone chose its view:
One sliver of sky.
The trees.
A long curve of water
moving northeast toward someplace else.
When I first photograph it
in Route 66 State Park,
I do not yet know we will spend
a year together.
I am only walking a trail.
The bench is only a bench.
The river is moving quickly that day,
green with spring runoff.
Leaves unfold overhead.
Somewhere beyond the trees,
a train sounds its horn.
I take a photograph and continue on.
Then I return.
A few days later.
A few weeks later.
Again.
Again.
The river lowers.
The air grows thick enough to wear.
Vines climb fallen tree trunks.
Grass thickens.
The air hums with insects
so determined in their purpose
they seem incapable of doubt.
Autumn arrives carrying its familiar tools.
Gold.
Copper.
Rust.
Leaves gather around the legs
and drift across the seat.
The birds change shifts in the air
and the shadows lengthen below.
Then winter.
The kind that introduces itself quietly at first.
A single hard frost.
Bare branches.
A thin skin of ice.
Then snow.
Then wind.
Then the sort of cold
that makes a bright blue scarf question
perfectly reasonable decisions.
I walk a mile through a wind chill
of thirteen below zero
to take another photograph.
The bench, meanwhile,
has traveled nowhere at all.
By then,
a question has begun following me
up and down the trail.
At what point does a bench
become an acquaintance?
Not a friend.
That would be absurd.
The bench knows nothing about me.
It cannot recognize my footsteps.
It has never once asked
how I am doing.
Yet I find myself looking for it
before I look for the river.
I notice when a branch falls nearby.
I wonder how it fared
when tornado sirens blared.
I am relieved to find it waiting
where I left it.
The year continues assembling itself.
Rain after rain.
Season after season.
Photograph after photograph.
One afternoon I stand beside it
and look across the water.
A hawk flies overhead,
followed by a kettle of vultures,
circling.
"Something is about to be eaten,"
I say out loud to no one,
and I'm a little bit surprised
there is no answer.
The trees are busy becoming
whatever comes after this.
For a moment,
neither of us is in a hurry.
Above the river,
a branch sways gently in the wind.
And light moves across the bench
like a hand.
—Iris Lennox