The wordlessness of the slow-moving stream
told her something of her father,
his silence, not stony, but slow-moving.
Wood that lay splintered in more or less
arm-length blocks and the excess,
innumerably-sharded next to the pile.
Neat, like her father. He sometimes
held the wood, or shaped it for pleasure,
because not everything is useful.
His rougher hands in steady,
lulling rhythm, like the neighbour boy
she had caught by the river.
That wordless river, and her, wordless.
