Last night after work, I biked down Falls Road looking for a place I could climb down to the river. I spotted one around a nice bend in the road, a steep foot path with large rocks at the bottom, stashed my bike amidst some trees so it would be out of sight from the road, and lowered myself - and my guitar - carefully down to the bottom. Once there, my only company was the rushing sounds of water breaking over rocks and some old man-made stone and concrete structure which now stands without purpose amidst the water. It’s a very private place, the one I found. The only visitors are black birds and swallows (and a few mallard ducks) who have come to hunt the many small swarms of insects which hang in ragged clumps in the air. None of them bothered me though, and I only received a few small scrapes on my right arm, around my rose tattoo, from small thorns along the way down. My guitar in its bag did not slide down into the water like I feared it would at first. To the left, I found some rocks to sit on in a sort of alcove. They looked almost like frozen lava, blobby shapes sealed into hard flat stones closely overlapping one another.

The light rail crossed behind the trees on the other side of the river, up the hill. Sometimes with advertisements on it, sometimes without. I wondered if the passengers in it saw me sitting there on the rocks in my oversize hat, guitar flashing in the setting sun. I felt like the birds were listening as I sang. I wondered if maybe they were learning, if they were memorizing my songs, and if they would sing them to one another after I was gone, or go and try to impress another bird with the song by pretending they made it up themselves though. I don’t know if birds sing about heartbreak though, or about travelling many miles and finding that there is nothing to be gained or lost. They probably sing about mosquitos or the way the air feels so cool blowing down the river. Living in a state of Grace, I don’t imagine they spend much time worrying about such things as Love.

Swore I heard the bubbly sound of some river syrinx accompanying my chords as they bounced across the waterfalls and rocks. The wild song of the nymphs who habitate that particular confluence of natural features harmonizing with my own. Nymphs, I think, would know of heartache and loss, the water always flowing past them and never lingering, the banks and the shore rising up into the distance in mysteries which they will never perceive, their spirits tied to the water.

Garbage is the only other thing which lingered down there. The nymphs had erected a series of rocks across the fall to capture the lost memories of man. I saw two safety barrels caught in them at various points, and many empty plastic soda pop bottles. Having seen no others, I wonder if the nymphs think these things our greatest treasures.

Climbing back out, I realized there were no footholds on the way back, and clung both hands end over end to a root in the hillside to scramble up over the steep flat rock face. My bike remained silently waiting where I’d left it in the undergrowth. Back at the road, I discovered I’d not been the first visitor to explore this spot. A photocopy of a black baby with the word “LOVE” written in graffiti and wheat-pasted to a lamp post (”scheduled for removal” as it proved to be on a massive tilt) awaited me at the top. My former co-worker at the Dog Temple had beaten me to it, and left a marker of the magic in this place for any man or woman who knows how to follow the old signs.