River Song

I’ll keep the refrain of the song of the river

           Its rumble and shout as it courses along

   Caressing the rock into smooth, graceful contours

                   High leaping arcs as it thunders on down

             The roil and the roll and the coming together

       Frothy rejoining of channels

Soft curling curve of the eddies returning

      Sloshing back over the rocks

              See how it takes me

                    It captures and fascinates

                            I could behold it forever

            Much later, memory takes it to illustrate

Life-thrumming rhythms within

And I find myself feeling

         we’ve come through a waterfall

             Free falling, crashing, and tumbling out

                  Joy of abandon, then jolt of the reckoning

                         Sinking and wondering:

                              Where are we now?

               Deep in the pool, in the calm underneath

           we remember

       Water is one, and we’ve never been lost or alone

We fall with the force from the source to the ocean

        Far-flung but always at home

     So we rise, so we roll, so we merge

           In the pulsing repeat of the song

      So, smoothly, our courses converge

 In what we have been all along.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 15, 2012