River, time.

Time can drag sweetly, sliding long on moments of endless opportunity.  Sometimes it is swift, unidirectional, unrelenting, intractable.  What was a tree or a forking stream is now a canyoned river, a rudderless boat.  We move like water skimmers, adept and hovering on this thin tension, the present.  No eyes for the enormous flowing body, palps to the ripples at our feet, hope only for luck and the next stride.