The Creek

Not rooted, as if cut and put for people,
an old tree stump waits in the creek,
a pedestal
for an office worker’s lunch break.
In miracles you may or not believe
but notice your face hovering over the water
and now perceive
the halo gliding under a strider,
how each foot-well puckers like a liquid lens.
Likewise, crowning shadow in refraction,
belief begins
not in baptism but surface tension
between the light of the world and the face
of the water and the self-image we anoint.
Ripples may trace
a trinity of rings to a single point.
It may surprise you, an empirical observer,
to find yourself thinking such a thought
and even more
to catch yourself wondering at
the way it spills around a bend with a noise
like churchgoers leaving communion,
a single voice
dispersing into dialects of living stone,
burping crannies, chuckling slabs, gossiping gravel,
how it all goes prattling over a precipice
to bedevil
the rapids and pool again in peace.
Rumors of gross gutters, legends of bright lawns
whisper down the watershed, converge
where a spring runs
pure as myth. Let those with ears judge:
Is this a deceitful brook? Do these waters fail?
Come in quiet when the questions start
and listen well
to the ruddy creek that rushes through the heart.

R. S. Mitchell

R.S. Mitchell is a writer and editor based in Crozet, Virginia, where he lives with his wife and two daughters. He blogs at foolfathomfive.blogspot.com.

http://foolfathomfive.blogspot.com
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Pride

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The Sight