Day 20-ish: The River

Poem:

The River

The river rages and gushes,

carves its muddy banks,

 

pushes broken ice along,

bounces chunks on currents,

 

splashes and roars,

wet fury unfurled.

 

Only a week ago it sat,

a placid, frozen sheet,

 

held small feet up

while heat set in,

 

sank into serene surface

while water pushed up.

 

Outside and inside squeezed,

invisible, silent,

 

cracked the solid depth

till the surface shattered.

 

Commentary:

 

With spring comes new life: rain descends, trees blossom and bloom, animals wake and surge with nature's call to procreate.  With all of this comes a sense of surging emotions, and this poem works to use a spring scene to connect to anger.

 

The breaking into stanzas seems appropriate to reflect the breaking up of ice in a river.  The imagery is built around the concept of emotion that starts to build well before anyone can see or feel it, the burning and rising below an ostensibly serene surface, the quiet simmering before that surface breaks.  So much happens underneath what we see; this poem is an attempt to capture the underneath.