<small>Stop and use this page as a prompt if you wish, or continue on from here. Or you could [[a mind to meander|go back to where the river begins]].</small>
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What is a river?
Something incongruent?
Is a river the water,
Or [[the current that flows through]] it?
Is a river the rocks and mud
that make up its bed?
Is a river the moss and algae
Or the fallen trees instead?
If one fills a bucket
With water from a stream
Would that bucket's contents then
be the river's facsimile?
[[If the water were to vanish]],
Would the river then abscond?
And if its walls were to leave instead,
Would that shapeless water be a pond?
What is a river?
Is it the docks upon its banks?
Is it the murmuring and the muttering
Or the [[boats of steel and planks]]?
The living beings inside it?
The assorted debris?
The fishing line and bobbers?
The colonial reverie?
Even those inside it
Don't know what to gleam
When asking what a river is
And [[what divides it from the sea]]
> – AxoLofa