With all birth, life, firstly there is pain.
Not yet a river, she is a spring,
for she is she,
a tiny eruption through pebble earth and moss
from dank brittle stone to the bracing alpine air,
born and life’s journey begins.
Tumbling, falling, careering, spinning, bruising,
scraping against wiser smoothed stones
that whisper sage advice, slow
you have a lot to learn,
but this is life, surely, fast and furious, noise not music,
I’ll meet you at the bottom she says.
With age comes strength, currents, eddies, whirlpools,
eventually a meeting of other youthful waters,
romance, flirting and intercourse
when some become one, responsible, a beautiful adolescence
of stunning curves, thrusting loins, deepening emotions
flashing colours, licking foam, her damp breath spray.
So comes a confident serenity of the beautiful age, as
emerald blues fade to silver greys, and
she has time to pause, wave, beckon and carry her young,
we call her mother, bathe and frolic amongst her skirts
and at sunset lie to sleep close by her side,
there is a peace, a low parental hum, then slumber.
Slow, unsure, meandering her wits are now dimming
her life’s journey nears its end, reflections abound
in sedentary, shallow memory pools,
the salinity, a taste of death, a portent, nearly spent,
just one look back, one long last laboured, delirious sigh
then gone, carried on her final tidal pyre.
© Graham Sherwood 07/2014
