feel the energy required

Standing in a river
waist-deep
feel the energy required
in your deepest muscles
to fight against the current
to stay still
where you are.

The river, the water, the current,
your life,
wants to sweep you away
in flow
but you resist.

Feel the energy required
to resist the flow of life.
You want to stay, here, or there,
but wouldn’t it be easier
to relax your muscles
lift your feet from the riverbed
and submit to the current?

Parts of the forest
can be seen and appreciated only
from the river’s view.
Relinquish control
release the past
and let the water carry you.

river current

You were the river
eroding shorelines
constantly flowing.

I believed
I could stand on the sandbar
in the middle
and you wouldn’t hurt me.

You swept me up
and into the current
proving how helpless
I was all along.

out of the current

When I wrote about you
I hardly had to think at all.
Words appeared on the paper
as if from nowhere,
or a power higher and stronger than myself.

Flowing like a river downstream
I had no choice but to follow it,
with words to describe you, us,
in hundreds of ways
sweeping me with the current.

I am out of the current now.
There may be peace in calm, cool water
but also discomfort.
I wish not to write of you any longer,
but I cannot find words for anything else.