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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
