Flowing Water

FLOWING WATER Though my boat be shaken and tossed, Serenity is in the mind, in the soothed soul -- My spirit’s not aching or forsaken. Nor is it lost. It needs no flow from smoothed shoal. Not for me still waters, though they run deeply In the placid pool behind a hinged lock-gate on a canal, Or slowly with a meandering boat on the Mississippi. I need contrast : this flowing peace is too banal. Through a thunderstorm’s raging performance And the torrent plunging itself to the abyss floor Peace is in my mind : contrast between wild disturbance And mild tranquility is my key to the locked poetry door. Where the flowing tide consumes the sand, With the week’s hunger of a wolf without balm, And hurls it about as a carcass of land -- In this ocean storm with wave merciless, I feel only calm. When the tumultuous shrieking wind and wave break And spend themselves urgently on the silent sandy slope, The tumblers of my locked imagination shake Open, and I feel the lull and pull of peace and hope. A child in a warm bed listens to the windy rain on pane And feels the same catalysis : and, peeping at the driven rivulets, Sees storms and hears the cries of lost sailors on the main, And falls to sleep contented, secure beneath the coverlets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Written by Sydney Peck on 24 September 2011 For Francine Roberts’s Contest “Flowing water”