Some rivers you put into trusting to the livery
downstream, to the hirelings who will wade
into the shallows and hand you from kayak
to bank; I thought that was the deal I’d made

with time: that I would live until interrupted,
that I would be swept where the current said
and at the last alight. How strange, then,
to learn that being was a palindrome I’d read

to its hairpin middle. I thought it was a river—
how strange, hull spun on a backwater, to learn
that my route ran out and back, to feel myself
grow younger. I did not think I would yearn

for the silver to change to rust, to be as beautiful
bent double, unsteady again. Well, now I know
the tributaries of Adam’s ale. Now, unable to forget
there will be an end, with awful strength, I row.