"Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time? That the river is everywhere…everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.”
Herman Hesse, Siddhartha
“The many bridges. The many stories.
The way over the river.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer
“May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours 1.12
“That under a moonless sky, the river makes its own mercurial light. Light that is also darkness, darkness that is also light.”
Diane Setterfield, Once Upon a River
“Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation.”
Earnest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
“The Mississippi River Empties Into The Gulf”
and the gulf enters the sea and so forth,
none of them emptying anything,
all of them carrying yesterday
forever on their white tipped backs,
all of them dragging forward tomorrow.
it is the great circulation
of the earth's body, like the blood
of the gods, this river in which the past
is always flowing. every water
is the same water coming round.
everyday someone is standing on the edge
of this river, staring into time,
whispering mistakenly:
only here. only now.
lucille clifton
“the real river flows under the river”
James Galvin,
“Against the Rest of the Year”
“all knowing it flows
one way, shining or in shadows”
Linda Hogan, “Journey”
“A river of experience flows through you…And it has its own direction.”
Joan Klagsbrun
“rain hail snow ice
I love watching the river”
Ikkyu (trans. Stephen Berg)