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”
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