imagine

Time for the annual Autumnal harvest of poetry.  Here’s the poem that made me buy the book.

Imagine being that fluke of rock
that juts out from the face of the hill,

the rock that breaks the stream’s fall,
day and night, for millennia.

The stream runs over, sleek as mercury,
has no choice but to strike you —

shatters into beads that fire away
at more or less predictable angles.

All that varies is the weight of the water,
in drought, or after heavy rain;

the pace of the flow; the pitch
and volume of the shattering.

Imagine the deadlock,
the passion.  Imagine the stars.

‘Breaking the Fall’
Jean Sprackland
Tilt