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1. Rivers At The Bend

   11.Nov.07, 15:17 EST
   
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   Welcome to Redrocks, Texas,
   Home of Rivers.
   Actually, There's only one river that flows near Redrocks,
   The Rio Grande,
   One of America's best known waterways.
   Yeah,
   The Rio Grande is talked about a lot,
   Even though it only flows in three states,
   And Mostly just in New Mexico and Texas.
   Important to both states,
   The Rio Grande is also Mexican,
   Part of the way.
   Since it starts in the U.S.,
   We think of it as our river,
   Something we just share with the Mexicans.
   But sharing is never easy -
   Not when it's water you share . . .
   In a desert.
   
   But Redrocks has two rivers -
   The Rio Grande,
   And then there's Moe Rivers,
   The guitar man.
   Nobody knows rivers better than Rivers,
   'Cause he grew up on the banks of the Mississippi,
   Father of Waters.
   Down south they take water for granted,
   Got lots of it,
   Too much sometimes.
   That's the way with water,
   It seems -
   Too little when you want it,
   Too much when you don't.
   And in some ways Moe Rivers was like that himself.
   Like lots of people in the borderlands,
   Moe came dragging a bag of bones he needed burying.
   He never learned as a young man,
   It's best to bury the dead and move on.
   Moe moved on,
   But toting that sack of bones dragging him down,
   Holding him back.
   Nobody drags real bones without getting noticed,
   And Moe didn't much care for being noticed,
   Unless he got drunk.
   Then everybody noticed him.
   Yeah,
   You could go a long time without seeing Moe,
   But when you did,
   You saw too much of him.
   But that was in the old days,
   And things are different now.
   
   The river is important to us,
   Represents important things in American folklore,
   Lots of references about crossing the river,
   Or meeting at the river.
   Religious sorts make great use of river metaphors,
   As do old cowboys.
   "You'd do to ride the river with," they'd say,
   Meaning you were an OK kinda hombre -
   Trustworthy and solid.
   Moe Rivers talks a lot about rivers now,
   Always has.
   Back when he still prowled the bars,
   He'd talk of living on Big Muddy,
   The monster catfish he caught,
   Or about raging waters that swept the banks clean of people,
   Left driftwood piled for decades.
   He spun wild tales of trapping and hunting,
   About big boats and more.
   
   These days he talks in other places,
   Almost another language too,
   About the things he learned from real rivers.
   Down at the guitar shop on Rio Vista Street,
   If you're lucky,
   You still might get some tales of muddy waters,
   Suckholes and quicksand,
   Floods and raging waters -
   All about rivers he's known.
   But . . .
   He'll also tell you how he spent half his life swimming upstream,
   Against the current,
   Until he learned to go with the flow,
   Drift with the tide of waters,
   'Cause a river always goes somewhere,
   And that's part of life,
   The great adventure of finding out where the river takes you.
   He'll likely tell you what the river taught him,
   How it was the river that showed him how to take a pile of wood,
   And turn it into a beautiful guitar.
   This,
   He will tell you,
   Has been his journey of discovery,
   For there are lessons in the river,
   If you pay attention.
   
   Back in his youth,
   Moe didn't have much regard for rivers.
   Like lots of other folks who learn hard lessons about the waters,
   He took what he wanted from them,
   Paid no attention to their needs,
   Then went his own way,
   Not caring what he'd left in his wake.
   But waters have a way of paying you back,
   Or at least evening the score,
   For they are allied with other forces.
   A part of Mother Nature's family,
   They have allies in kindship with somethng much older than mankind,
   Much wiser,
   And much more reverent.
   As an older man,
   A man grown keen of mind and spirit and even body,
   Moe grieved for the sins of his youth,
   Promised God he'd do better.
   And some would say that was only natural,
   That the river is where Moe found God,
   And a new life that no longer feared the water,
   Or hated the river.
   
   Scars left over from the rambunctiousness of our suckling years,
   Back when we were still on the tit of Mother Earth,
   Can sometimes break open and fester later on.
   Such is the curse of the taker,
   The tit sucker who refuses to be weaned,
   And threatens the nourishment of us all.
   Examples of this are all around us,
   All along the river.
   Too much irrigation,
   Too many pesticides and herbicides,
   And leaches -
   Not just the little blood suckers that live in the waters,
   But the big ones living on the banks.
   It seems to be the same with all rivers,
   Here and elsewhere.
   And then the river gets even.
   Encouraged by allies,
   The river fights back,
   Like all things that are wild.
   Nobody ever tames a river,
   Not completely.
   And sometimes,
   Like a tamed tiger we have almost learned to trust,
   She bares her fangs and bites us hard.
   Moe knew all about the rage of rivers.
   One took his brother back in '69,
   Pulled down by a churning wave of water in floods that year.
   They should have gone to higher ground,
   But some floods have no regard even for hills.
   The why of things doesn't matter in the end,
   When it's done and gone.
   And Moe went on from there,
   Angry and swimming upstream,
   Even though he never saw that river again.
   But water has a way of drawing you back,
   In time.
   
   There had been a woman once,
   And a child.
   Lost them both in different ways -
   The child to sickness too big for medicine and doctors to cure,
   The woman to sickness too subtle to be treated by docs and medicine.
   She went her own way years ago,
   His drinking caused her going,
   And again,
   He swam upstream again in muddy water,
   Hoping he'd drown,
   But never able to stay under long enough to die.
   It was the Rio Grande that saved him,
   Not because she's a gentle river all the time.
   She is old and much abused,
   And barely holding on herself.
   Too many people neeeding a buck still on the tit,
   Still sucking her almost dry,
   Still filling her with things she cannot digest.
   But she's a proud river,
   And she still has allies of her own.
   We are her enemy,
   Always wanting more.
   Building dams so man can have the water he craves,
   And demands.
   Bad managers we've been,
   Poor partners with the river,
   On both sides of the border.
   
   Moe Rivers came to Redrocks a broken man,
   With just a suitcase and some old tools.
   He settled in on Rio Vista,
   Not far from a bend in the river,
   In just a shack of a residence.
   He put out a small sign that read:
   
                                   Moe Rivers,
                                  Guitar Maker
   
   Moe fished the Rio Grande,
   And hunted her banks.
   For more than ten years he lived that way,
   Disappearing for weeks on end,
   Unable to die,
   Unwilling to live.
   No one really knew where he went,
   Mexico maybe,
   Chihuahuan Desert hunting and scavenging.
   He always looked for wood,
   Went to Paracho occasionally to learn more about guitars.
   Moe was gaunt and hollow-eyed back then,
   Off his feed,
   Rocked back on his heels and reeling,
   Often too drunk to know where he was,
   Or care.
   
   In Paracho he met a guitar maker,
   One Oswaldo Hernandez-Goetz,
   Half Mexican,
   Half who knows what,
   But always in Paracho where he built guitars.
   Oswaldo knew about rivers,
   How hard it is to swim upstream,
   And avoid the suckholes and undercurrents.
   He knew what it felt like to be drowning,
   And he knew about River's river.
   They built guitars together,
   And talked a lot.
   Oswaldo knew little about real rivers,
   But he told Moe about what he'd learned from the moutains.
   He talked about the takers and the spoilers,
   About how he had been slow to wean himself,
   And how it almost pulled him down.
   He spoke of how the mountains,
   Like the rivers,
   Are part of the circle of allies we call Mother Earth.
   You can work with them,
   Or against them,
   But you can't beat the system,
   Can't rewrite an ancient script written in stone.
   Oswaldo had learned how to live with the mountains,
   Even though they had caused him much pain,
   Until he learned to share with them,
   To take just what he needed,
   And no more.
   He learned that if you treat them with kindness,
   They return the favor.
   He had learned that the mountains,
   Like the rivers,
   Had allies all about.
   He said he heard it in the mountains,
   From the wind,
   The waters,
   And the voices of critters there,
   And finally understood,
   That he should not be the enemy,
   But an ally -
   A loving friend.
   This is the message in the mountains,
   And in the rivers.
   Yes,
   In the rivers too.
   
   What you learn from Mother Earth,
   You use to craft the wood.
   This is the thing about wood that is so wonderful,
   Oswaldo teaches him.
   We are the most useless of things,
   When it gets right down to it.
   Alive,
   A tree is shade and a thing of beauty in the wild.
   Dead,
   A tee is wood,
   And still alive for those who know what to do with it.
   Misused,
   It's just a dead tee,
   But used wisely,
   It can become a part of a masterpiece,
   Like a great guitar.
   But . . .
   People are not like the trees.
   We have more potential while we live than them.
   We do not have to die to become a masterpiece,
   A work of art.
   We are worthless dead,
   If anything,
   Just a burden of disposal.
   Graveyards are proof of that.
   What is left of us is determined by what we do alive.
   Do not waste the wisdom of the mountains,
   Or of the rivers -
   Do not waste the wood.
   
   Back in Redrocks,
   On the Rio Grande,
   Rivers took to the river with eyes a little wiser now,
   And with an eagerness to learn her secrets.
   He listened and watched,
   Waiting for an understanding that did not come,
   And he could not understand why.
   His guitars somehow came up short,
   Did not meet his mark -
   Not quite right in symmetry and sound,
   Not quite what they should be.
   The wood had been carefully chosen,
   The measurement calculated with care,
   And the work done with skilled hands -
   But still the finished product did not measure up.
   And he thought of Oswaldo's charge -
   Do not waste the wood.
   And now . . .
   The river taunted him,
   And called him out again.
   What a cantankerous old bitch,
   This stingy river,
   Holding on to secrets he should know,
   But didn't.
   
   He thought about Paracho and Oswaldo,
   And the way that had been shown to him,
   Of how to find what he could own,
   If only it would make itself available.
   Rivers couldn't see the river through the fog of all his drinking,
   Even on the days he didn't drink.
   For that is the way with a false friend -
   Gives you immediate relief,
   Nothing lasting,
   And no clear view of what is up ahead.
   He could not see that a straight line is nothing but a circle.
   Yes,
   A circle not yet made.
   The simple wisdom of it all,
   What a bend in the river can tell you,
   In time,
   Is that bent far enough,
   The ends meet and the circle is complete.
   But the fog is ofen comforting,
   Covering you up,
   Obscuring you from those who might see the bones you drag behind.
   And you wallow in the self-pity of this self-inflicted fog,
   Until . . .
   An ally comes to help you out.
   Like the river or the mountain,
   We all have allies too.
   
   The guitar maker from Paracho,
   Old Oswaldo,
   Turned out to be his best ally,
   Like rain to him ending a long dry spell.
   And in the small town of Paracho,
   Where there was so much drunkenness all around,
   Moe Rivers found an ally who would lead him through the fog.
   Long weeks he suffered withdrawal,
   Cravings as the fog was cleared away,
   And always with Oswaldo at his side,
   Leading the way,
   Showing him a way he could understand and trust -
   A way he called a Higher Power.
   Oswaldo led to a brotherhood,
   New allies once bound by such a fog befriended him,
   Helped him learn to navigate the river,
   Live in Harmony with it,
   And make friends with God.
   
   Moe Rivers lives along the river still,
   Weaned off booze and free of holds.
   His guitars make fine music now,
   Meet all his expectations.
   And though he is old and getting frail,
   His hands still work the magic of an artisan,
   And a man at peace.
   He is there along the river,
   At his guitar shop.
   Look for an old adobe building with a wide door,
   And a sign that says:
   
                                          Moe Rivers,
                                  Maker of Fine Guitars
                              "Do Not Waste The Wood"
   
   Stop off and have a coffee,
   Let him tell you about rivers . . .
                      And Rivers.
   
   
   
                                                            D. Paz Dalton, 2006