Vonnegut says write for only one person. He also says that most writers only write for one person, even though they may not realize who, or why. I read that in the Bagombo Snuff Box introduction (savored every word), and thought to myself, self, writing for whom? Especially since the writing bug has flown out the window, or maybe is just nesting in the wool hats in the closet.

Or maybe in my case it's not a question of writing for whom, but for whom not write? I have no curiosity for long overdue news.

I know I fail on the requirement to write only for one person, because I can read some of these archives and I know they're for mom & dad, or Grandma, for a friend, even for someone who I wish didn't know the location of this blog, but most of them are for S.

By and large they're for my love, and they're like I'm sitting next to him on a riverbank watching the water roll with leaves riding the green and silver and black currents, talking softly enough to hear the water's rush. And it's the end of summer again, when nature's green turns gold again and the light comes in sleepy over the earth's curve at a steeper angle of repose, gentle, soft.

It may take time to return to where I was. I've been churned under and caught, rocked against snags, scraped by deep sharp rocks and at some point I came up against the impasse, the breadth and depth of which I can't fathom.

But I've been with him on some amazing riverbanks in the past year.

We hiked and swam in Italy's wild alpine River Toce, and marched through the sweltering heat in Torino along the cement-encased River Po. We ambled across Florentine bridges and watched the bats flick late at night, glint in the beautiful lights reflected by the River Arno. We kissed on the Ponte Vecchio and watched the slow black water slide beneath the wood beam butresses holding up the little shops, all closed with ancient iron bars against the night.

I crossed the Willamette and the Columbia Rivers and drove 500 miles to find him again, and we strolled along the Skagit where he caught a salmon the night before I arrived after a month being away from him. He took me high into the Washington Cascades to see Diablo Dam's amazing chasm. So much water, so much water.

Dams are curious things; useful blockages, generation of elecricity, flood control. I'm trying to find the controls again, trying to regulate, open the flood gate, let it roll through again.