Beauty Like A River

Trust is the hardest thing! 

Believing that with enough
Silence, enough stillness,
Our earthly tethers will
Slacken their hold just long enough to let the soul breathe

Like a chained dog testing
A thousand times the limits
Of its freedom,

Suddenly, by sheer Grace,
No longer feeling the familiar
Choke-hold in one last, frenzied thrust away from every crushing thing

And there, suspended mid-air
In that brilliant moment...

Beauty like a river
Flows all around and was
Never absent!

Freedom, like a wave,
Sweeps every barren place
Anointing darkness with light
And a profusion of flowers.


Hawkscry April 9, 2012
William Stanhope
(This is the first poem written in Dogwood Cottage)