ingesting silt dredged
from hills’ peaks to valley’s feet.
She naps, playing dead,
half asleep.
Slack water’s undercurrent
reveals jutting tidal flats,
the mottled sand bar like
a lizard’s back, or lines
of wisdom on her face.
The tide turns; she awakes,
casting off the warm
embrace of the sun,
racing to mingle waters
with foam-flecked waves.
Current shines in singing eddies,
a steady crescendo of brine
that feeds her thirst
from the estuaries' flow,
as the breeze grows
the river breathes out
life of stream and meadows.
This poem is a form of poetry called a persona poem. In a lot of examples of the persona poem the poet writes from the perspective of a historical figure, or a contemporary personality such as a politician. In this poem, I attempt to personify the river in my home town as it reaches its final course in the Mersey estuary.
This is not strictly a persona poem as it's written in the third person. Still, I wanted to experiment with the form to express how I often view aspects of nature (during meditation) to have their own consciousnesses.
The first draft of this poem was written more than two years ago while in meditation near the banks of the Mersey after a long bike ride and has been through many re-writes since.
I was inspired to dig this out - and put it through a final draft - by a recent conversation about the nature of consciousnesses. I personally think that there are many forms of consciousness, more than the human mind generally envisions, and the world opens up when you can see the varying consciousness in the environment around you.
That is partly what this poem is about; the infinite variations of perception when you see the life that beats at the heart of everything.
I hope you enjoy the poetry reading 🙂 🌿
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