how the river turns

how the river turns

walls and windows into 

fluid squiggles

The River Kaw, also known as the Kansas River, runs through Lawrence, Kansas, dividing the city, which is connected by the Massachusetts Street bridge.

The Bowersock Dam crosses the river under the bridge. A low impact dam, it is the only hydroelectric dam in Kansas.

Suspended above the dam are electric high lines. On these perches with a view, crows gather. They come and go, but there is always room for more along the wires.

I walk down below the bridge for a closer view of the water. Someone has inscribed LOVE in red letters on the underside of the bridge. For awhile I watch the way the water reflects buildings, turning stone and glass into free-flowing abstractions. 

Across the river, the sun setting behind bare trees turns the water to liquid gold.

On the north side of the river near the bridge, someone has constructed an amazing sculpture composed of driftwood and river trash, set among the limestone boulders of the flood bank.

 

The river hones the wood, revealing the grain, turning it silver. And the river casts up the junk that has been thrown, dropped, lost in the water, so that humans with beauty in their eyes can turn it into art.