And so the river flowed unimpeded to distant seas, mingled tears and raindrops swimming in eddies and currents oblivious to fate, oblivious to pasts or presents and certainly to futures. Detritus and twigs joined them, and tadpoles and frogs and fish, also oblivious to fate, oblivious to pasts and certainly to futures but presents were another thing, omnipresent presents, links in chains in temporal forges formed, chains without real bearings and to be honest, without direction.

And so the river flowed and one day, seeing it reflected in a mirror in my mind, I sought it in my dreams, and in my dreams I found you by its shore, your slender feet playing with rippling wakes they formed as presents passed you by, you’d no use for pasts or futures you explained, you’d had too much of the former and thus the latter feared. Unlike normal dreams, either sleeping or waking, instead of fading I became obsessed with you, wondering if you might be real.

And so the river flowed but over time I realized I could never grasp a present without pasts or futures and that I could never find you, you who lived only there, who lived in an infinite, constantly changing instant without memories and thus without regrets, without hopes or aspirations and thus without disappointments, that I could never find you except perhaps during fortunate dreams you’d not remember and which I’d never forget.

Where were those distant seas I wondered once from deep within a dream? Could you be real, someone I might have loved but lost, or someone I once loved but misplaced? I gazed a bit more deeply into that mirror in my mind, the one in which, asleep, I sought the river but really searched for you. Reflected deep within, a pallid rainbow stretched; its azures and greens, its ambers and crimsons bleached, gradients of brilliant greys all that remained, El Arco Iris Gris, one I recognized, it was I.

And so the river flowed unimpeded to distant seas, mingled tears, now mine, swimming in eddies and currents not quite oblivious to fate, nor to pasts nor presents and certainly not to futures, especially futures that would never be. Detritus and twigs and true loves lost joined them, ours among them, but you’d gone, things that might have been but never were, were there instead, pasts and futures but presents were another thing, omnipresent presents, links in chains in temporal forges formed.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2018; all rights reserved.

Guillermo Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia although he has primarily lived in the United States of America (of which he is a citizen). Until recently he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.