The wet fresh voice of the river

Poems with water running through them

Photo by Fatih Beki on Unsplash

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I’ve been Lent-ing pretty hard in this space the past few weeks, and showing you (mostly) a lot of poems I’ve shown you in other years. Nothing wrong with that; it’ll probably happen again next week. Today, though, I’m thirsty, and a little tired, and ready to dabble my toes in some fresh running water. Or to watch while an angel considers a dabble of their own.

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STAINED GLASS WINDOW                                             2016
Angel, Hovering


Going up?
Going down?
See God’s eternal go-between, adrift
in temporal hesitation.

Wings and left hand, obedient, point
toward heaven, but the right hand,
the gaze, even the toes, reach longing
for that green-brown valley and its waters,
radiant — from this blue-billowed height — 
as any celestial city.

Throne of God,
sunlight on mountain tree-tips,
music of the spheres,
wet fresh voice of the river,

earth, heaven, earth — where is God’s word
spoken, which direction does it travel,
where do the Maker’s messengers
live and move and have their being?

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RIVER                                                                                 2025


It rises where it does, trickling untasted
between stones, through ferns, among the mosses
and away. If you are wise, you let it choose
its own path, seek its own level, dig
its own bed; you follow, step by step, amazed
at what springs up around it, even early —
roots it waters, life that swims and hops and hovers,
draws near soft-footed in the dusk to quiet thirst.
Amazed at how it shapes the earth in flowing,
the way it makes its path in conversation
with the hills, the way it gathers in the waters
of smaller streams, now running stronger, brighter;
the way its voice has altered — first a chuckle,
then a chatter, now a quiet lapping in the shallows,
as if its depths have hushed, listening to voices
that rise all around, the songs its waters feed.

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