The Dniester, Slow

Last morning, and I walked the embankment along the Dniester, the river that lends this country its name and carries its border. November water, low and slow, bare willows, a fisherman motionless enough to be furniture. The river does not observe the border it constitutes; water never does.

Across it, orchards and haze: Moldova proper, my father's side, the recognized world. From this bank it looks identical, which is the quiet joke geography plays on politics everywhere I travel.

Tonight, back to Chisinau and the kitchen and the catalogue of complaints Papa has prepared about my itinerary. I crossed a nonexistent border twice and found, both times, the same November, the same crows, the same patient river. File that under findings.