Nineteen years ago we put my father’s ashes into his beloved Mississippi River.  Yesterday my sister and I walked along the river, and came across these cottonwood trees, their roots revealed and honed by the river.

Can you allow the river of your life

to shape and polish you?

Will you stand in the slipstream,

the eddy, the boil and wash of your life

and reach for the sun?

The tree is not afraid

nor should you be

even when the current

is carrying you,

faster than imagination,

to another shore.