The River Speaks in My Voice

They call me the Echo Poet. I don’t find poems; I translate them. The ones the river carves into wet stone, the ones the wind scripts through barren branches. My notebook is just a glossary.

I walked into town with silt in my shoes and a stanza from a storm cloud. People stared. Then they listened. They heard the cedar’s slow, fibrous sonnet and the sharp, percussive haiku of woodpeckers.

Now they gather, not for me, but for the voice of the ravine I channel onto paper. My art is not creation, but attentive capture. I am merely the conduit for a world that never fell silent.