New Poem My Rivers

MY RIVERS; THE COMMINGLING
(XVIIIth Birthday Poem)

I

Water broken by sunlight
water in the wind
swept by ruffles
dark whorls
on the river;

pale cool waters
by the keel parted
carved by the searching prow
thrust by burdened rafts,
waters broken by voyaging.

On childhood’s coloured maps
the thin blue trace of rivers
Euphrates Tigris Nile
Danube Po The Thames
Rio Grande and Yangtse Kiang;
above the ranked reed beds
stem and stern posts
the beat of driven oars
heard not seen
the sway of passing masts.

These rivers join
the oceans of our blood.

II

Above the tree-lines
under scree slopes, stirring
in hidden springs ,
filtered through anabranching
downward thrust of roots:

the chill mountain waters
gather in rills
splash into leaping freshets
jet through the tumbled
boulders;

with weight of the high valleys
behind mounting waters
press of the millstones slowly revolve
and the clean grain pours
in the great stone throat.

From the long thrust
of the stream’s steep weight
the spin of the wheel
and the headlong rush
the white waters course on,

glancing from bank
to bank, through
sloping groves of budded ash
among thorns and bramble canes
still red with winter’s frost.

Below, the terraced fields
the rough stone barns
and steep slate roofs
of hillside farms catch
the glitter of falling water;

lower valleys receive and calm
these plummets of pebbled torrents,
anchoring them in the deep swirl
of green pools shaded
where stooping willows cling,

where dun brown cows doze
fetlock deep in water meadows;
here waters slide under country roads
briefly received by the arch
of lichen spattered stones.

So the river lives with its surface
broken by sunlight,
swept by patterned ruffles
making dark whorls
on its voyaging brim;

and takes for its easy burden
the prow and the helm
of our years of human lives—
these rivers join
the oceans of our blood.



Glen Phillips
© October 18, 1984