Home is a River

Cataract Gorge in flood 2003. Photo by Aaroncrick 

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

River light moves flashing

almost faster than the eye,

lilting, sparkling silver,

where the boats come round the bend.

Their keels break the water

into fragments dancing bright

like swift, slippery fish, or

iridescent dragonflies.

Night-times on the hilltop,

from my window I kept watch

across the clumped houses

and the dark shapes of the trees

down into the harbour,

that blank, flat, round-edged bowl

of dark pierced by moonlight –

seeming still, but still alive.

Higher up, the rapids

in the rocky gorge frothed white

over big black boulders

in between high canyon walls.

We climbed the crevices

using grass tufts and toe-holds,

not children but pirates

or explorers of the wild.

I live by a river

half across the country now:

warmer, wider, slower,

with a softer, bluer sheen.

I ask myself often

how I came to be so blessed,

smiling at its beauty

which is constant sustenance.

The cold stream of childhood

with its steep and stony banks

gave me reassurance,

guardian of my town and me.

Then life moved me elsewhere

and I couldn’t hear its voice.

Now another river

tells me, ‘Dear, this too is home.’

My own photo of the Tweed River near Murwillumbah. 
© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2015. All rights reserved. 

Linked to Poets United's Midweek Motif: River