The brook lays itself down among the trees,
ambling around the hips and shoulders
of the land, not in a hurry, satisfied
to allow itself to be let down to the sea
as the earth will draw it, not of its own mind,
but by the will of gravity and the ground
where it finds itself. It hurries only
when steepness beckons, then pools
in pooling places, pausing, languid,
here or there as if to savor, or to recollect.
Where there are falls it falls.
The water murmurs over stones
when they present themselves, swirling
beside the roots and mosses, gathers
behind a bosom of sticks and leaves
a storm has laid down, then finds its way
beneath them, uncomplaining.
It quietly collects some scalloped ribs of sand,
and just as quietly lets them go.
The stream receives the frogs and fish
who shelter there, and bears the water bugs
who skitter on its face, as well as storm-flung limbs
and whole great trees that fall and settle
in its bed. The water moves around, and carries on.
The brook surrenders itself to the pond,
and waits. At last it sighs over the spillway,
submits to the culvert beneath the road,
and moves on, until, when it is time,
when it is time, it finds the sea.
The spring and the cloud, the ocean,
and the great flowing beneath the earth are all here,
yet the brook is only here.
I will sit with you a while, little brook.
Teach me.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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