Summed up in the line, "destiny swallowing my wake". Reminds me of the line ( from Hamlet I think), "Thus Fate doth mold our days, fashion them as we will." A somber reflection on life.

This is awesome - you paint a beautiful picture. :)

'destiny swallowing my wake', yes, I see the pain, the acceptance and the paradox.Realities ae paradoxical.'Wake' seems to be just good for the role of an observer. hahahahah

Well done Jadi, I pictured a jungle river junket reading this...Charlie

The last verse is both mysterious and telling for me. I see the river as the longtitude of our lives. That hand lolling over into the water/spirit awakens the imagination that is nudged by consciousness to find the boundaries (shores) that SEEM like sanity. Haunting and beautiful, jadi.

thrusting your hand in dangerous waters is not unlike a Roman thrusting a lance in the side of Christ, almost inviting its wrath. It takes that sort of curiosity or risk I suppose to write a poem.

Some great lines in this and evocative images. Makes me wonder what the river is acually "shapeshifting" - the landscape or the observer left to wander its course. Excellent as always!

I think the last line is my favorite... for to distinguish the beginning from the end, is sometimes a very hard thing to do. ... Hopefully sticking ones hand in those waters does not leave you handless.. or heartless

Amazing writing JD, “Latitude in stylish grace ferried my imagination” – polished, subtle, introspective…all together a sort of plunge into the “shapeshifting river” itself…a plunge of one's hand into the known to find the unknown…or is it the other way around? Yes, we have the tendency to want eagerly to “distinguish the beginning from the end” – I see myself in that boat too. Spectacular writing.

I think your wake may endure.

and we are lost, lost in reverie... in this fleeting abyss called life... well worded here... blessings...

The essential timelessness of this poem lures me into watchfulness. Here we are "taunting reality" as the ordinary (in time) is taunted by the extraordinary (outside of time)", in response to the "taunting" that the ordinary appears to (but not does) accomplish on its own within the extraordiary timessness... All here exists within a "Latitude in stylish grace". What is this "latitude"? (Such a finely chosen word.) In one sense of pinpointing location, and beyond, it opens up into what any dictionary would call "breadth" and "freedom from normal restraints, limitations, or regulations" And so this poem does just that, "with stylish grace", sails outside of "normal restraints" in many ways, outside of time (spending "four days" (perhaps in retreat, in inner study, receptiveness) in one's "ferried" (great choice of word here again) "imagination"... outside of time also in the "dugout" (dugouts are the oldest boats archaeologists have found) simultaneous to listening to a "motor strain". The timelessness incorporated into the experience of fishing dwells here too, an apt analogy for the imagination's quest in the sea of real fish and "nappin" "croc's destiny" (Wow what a construction that is.) This river is not full of "napping" crocs. It is full of "napping croc's destiny swallowing my wake". In this we see the dream of the croc, active upon the imaganitive poet, that dream (the future that shivers with what is to be) swallowing him like a lure in the river of time, I think. The "seasoned plug" is alive in the present and the lure set out by the seasoned plug fisher who knows how to set the lures out ahead, in the drift... for first catch, early revelation, I imagine. Appropriately life's fish of yin and yang lure us into the endless circle beginningless, endless we in this poem, (our pen in) hand into the river of forgetfullness. That "shapeshifting river" is truly the tour de force of this poem. "shapeshifting" is long the generating transformative motion in folklore (lure?") centuries old where human form is changed beautified or diminished and returned that very force is (so rightly) attributed to the river (life itself) and moreover the secret power available to few in certain present practice on astral if not physical realm, to transform humaun form. This hidden power in these few (lines) gives rise to import, beauty, transformative power beyond normal limitations, of this poet upon us who .... read. Magnificent.