April 16th, 2001
#### Potomac Water Gap By Dave Motes
Every ancient inch is singular,
Exposed fingerprint rilles and whorls, the earth’s pit,
Remnants of ridges a thousand feet above.
A history of water made space in this spot
Dense patience waiting it way.
Adrift down a trace of God,
I let my eye slide over a wrinkle in time.
At the height is age, unbroken but where
the slightest shrug first let water through
when the ridges were young and holding back an ocean.
Smokey seconds ago the caissons
lugged lead along the defilade:
flicker of expression, ancient face.
Lower is the ravage, where cataclysm savaged ages
Of graceful rock is prodigal gusts, making monuments
In angular faces and jagged prows of mountain.
fady tints of human color half erased
in a shrug of decades:
rouged seams, granite profile.
Sinking I see stratches and scuffs on the billow rock
Where bridges and canals traced their motives,
Respecting the plan, taking the lesson of how to hold.
Massive piers scoured down,
iron tanglebent in rusting spavined masses:
rearing rusty snags of engineering
visible at the river’s leisure.
Below me, borne upstream by my passing,
an infinity of stone roots roil and channel,
a language of age
patiently testifying to the time that does not fly
but chips and licks in gentle gradual conquest.
~ Dave Motes
About Dave Motes
Home for Dave is Oakton, Virginia where he is a
high school English teacher and Fly fishing
instructor and guide with Mark Kovach Fishing
Services on the upper Potomac River near Harper’s
Ferry, WVA. He is married with a five-year old
son, and fishes both salt and freshwater for trout and
bass, stripers, but mostly smallmouth from Alabama to Minnesota.
Originally published April 16th, 2001 on Fly Anglers Online by Dave Motes.