I ... entered the poem of life, whose purpose is ... simply to witness the beauties of the world, to discover the many forms that love can take. (Barabara Blackman in 'Glass After Glass')

These poems are works in progress and may be updated without notice. Nevertheless copyright applies to all writings here and all photos (which are either my own or used with permission). Thank you for your comments. I read and appreciate them all, and reply here to specific points that seem to need it — or as I have the leisure. Otherwise I reciprocate by reading and commenting on your blog posts as much as possible.

21 May 2014

Listening to the River

(found poem)

A river seems a magic thing.
A magic, moving, living part
of the very earth itself.

To put your hands in a river
is to feel the chords
that bind the earth together.

In the rhythm of the lifeblood of the Earth
the river delights to lift us free,
if only we dare to let go.

A river sings a holy song
conveying the mysterious truth
that we are a river.

Know that the water has wisdom
in its motion through the world.
We are liquid. We share water’s wisdom.

How could drops of water know themselves
to be a river? Yet the river flows on.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

The river has taught me to listen.
The river knows everything.
If we are ignorant of this, we are lost.

I choose to listen to the river,
thinking river thoughts,
before joining the night and the stars.

For dVerse Poetics — It's Quotable

The prompt was to use a quotation as inspiration and incorporate it into the poem. This poem is all quotations, found at "River and Environmental Quotations" at the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System website. Some of the quotations are unchanged; others have omissions for poetic reasons, and some have been mixed together. (Many wonderful ones were regretfully not used because they would have interfered with the coherence of the poem.) The authors, more or less in sequence, are Laura Gilpin, Barry Lopez, Anonymous, Richard Bach, Thomas Moore, Eric Alan, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Langston Hughes, Herman Hesse and Edward Abbey — but you'll have to check the website to match quotes to authors exactly.

8 comments:

  1. how could drops of water know themselves to be a river...ha...i love that...
    ah i often choose to listen to the river...smiles. i wrote about them for today

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  2. 'To put your hands in a river
    is to feel the chords
    that bind the earth together.' ~ Oh, what a secret you're releasing here...what a bond you have with river, Rosemary! Thank you for sharing! ~ Unique poem!

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  3. I'm fortunate to live but a block from the Truckee River...it seems it most often has something to tell me when I walk beside it (there's a walkway where I take the dogs)

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  4. Wonderful.. I want to sit beside a river.. just to be in its presence

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  5. I grew up beside a river, I am very partial to them. Nice.

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  6. The river speaks - water is soulful. Nice.

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  7. Cool. Reminds me of the "found poems" of book spines. I like this.

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