condensing gives flow a course

what arrives finds a course already cut.

the condensing has given flow a course; the water here runs in a bed that form made for it. into that field something arrives, and it need not wander: the course is cut, and what enters moving water is carried at once.

dawn rain finds the stream that last year's rain made. the course preceded the arrival, and the arrival proves the course.

the balance tips, and the course receives it.

a balance reaches its tipping point where form has given flow a course. what spills when the balance goes over spills into the bed, and the bed carries it; the field was shaped for this kind of moment.

lightning follows the channel the storm prepared. the tip is sudden and the course is old, and together they are one clean event.

each shapes the other, ice and valley.

each shapes the other where condensing gives flow a course. ice and valley: the glacier carves the valley, and the valley steers the glacier, slow work in both directions, one landscape between them.

aurora runs the same exchange overhead, field and wind shaping each other. what each is, the other has been making.

the deepening course gains its rim.

an edge forms above the course: the valley's rim, the drawn line that shows how deep the water's work has gone. course below, rim above; the field reads in section now.

the horizon sits above every valley. the edge measures what the flowing has made, and the making gave the edge its place.

the coursed water gives way around the stone.

pressure arrives against water running in its course and meets no fixed opposition. the flow parts at the stone and rejoins below it, bed unchanged, direction kept.

cirrus streams past the mountain that pushed the air up. what pressed is now a feature of the course, an island the water knows.

the water comes to rest in its own course.

the field finds its level in the bed that form provided. the water stands in its course, a river become a chain of pools, everything held where the shape of the land holds it.

dusk stills the valley floor first. the course was made by motion and keeps its meaning in rest: even standing, the water lies in the line of its travel.

what comes back knows the way by the bed.

something comes back to a field where form gave flow its course. the bed remembers the water; a dry season leaves a river's line in the land, and the return runs it as if no time had passed.

the moon brings the tide up the same channels nightly. the course is the field's memory, and the return is the memory used.