I say

Cupped hands

To drink from winter streams.

Imperfect lets the perfect droplets fall

And in that moment makes,

A taste of what you have, and

A song of what escapes

My daughter and I are sitting at a café on the South Side of Congress Avenue sharing muffins and coffee with the early morning hipsters, politicians and homeless musicians that frequent any such venue in central Austin Texas.

I found the following in Amelia Barr's All the Days of My Life, (1913) describing her entry into Austin.

…..had I ever seen such exquisite and picturesque arrangements of hills….The City was built on hills, surrounded by a rampart of higher hills, crowned with the evergreen cedar, and the shinning waters of the Colorado wound in and out….

This would have been in 1856.  Yellow Fever had closed the port at Galveston, so the Barrs came overland passing through Bastrop and entering Austin as we read above.  If the “evergreen” is indeed juniper, the passage indicates high concentrations along the higher slopes.  

A cold night has brought clarity to the South Llano, her airs and waters.

The frost has let loose the turning leaves and they lay now across the water’s surface, a golden morning milky way as the silver one above fades to blue shell.

The chill has bled the river of the tiny diatoms that green its waters in the warmer months and each worn pebble or wisp of weed is outlined perfectly in their shallow beds.   The morning light encounters only clarity, and cold is the only name of these new colors.

The leaves move slowly upon the water but their shadows seem to race across the shinning gravel below and all that is still is made stiller by this contrast.  This light may warm the air on winter days to come, but the river will be dormant until spring.