Snuffed in the Greater Flow In Powder Hollow the snarl of river over sandstone rehearses the end of the world. I trace the path along the bank past the spot where Red and I stole chemical supplies—vials, retorts, and tarnished Bunsen burners— from a shack beside a box shop. The whole complex burned one night, propane tank exploding like a boil. At the bend a tiny brook, coughed from a wound of yellow clay, dribbles south through the village and snuffs in the greater flow. Once I crept upstream to the source and knelt at the spring and invoked the ghosts of Scantic Indians who prized the icy clear bubbling and camped on the gravel moraine overlooking the mouth of the brook. Beyond this sandy bend the wreck of a powder mill spikes the weeds. The sandstone block foundation and scattered fragments of brick, dispersed by the ’55 flood, suggest a culture that perished thousands, not a hundred years ago. A chimney eighty feet tall stood all through my childhood, then fell, dynamited for a hazard.                                  I return along the same mute path and feel the river quicken downhill the way I will on my deathbed, if I live long enough to get there, every pore open to a world I’ve hardly experienced: the cries of migrating geese racketing overhead, potholes eroding sandstone, and softwoods repealing summer’s overdose of leaves.