I've written since I was a child and can't bear not to write SOMETHING. I complain to God "how can you give gifts and talents and the poor recipient not know what to do with them" ? Like handing a monkey a microscope... Anyway. We live 100 feet above a mountain stream and I've fished it, floated it and swam in it. I've brought groceries home in a flat bottom boat when its flooded our road. Like all flowing water it's marvelous and a gift from God. This photo was taken directly below our home on the Middle Fork of the Saline River in the Ouachita Mountains of west central Arkansas.
This is a river poem I wrote some years ago. It starts as the river forms from tiny trickles up in the mountains and grows as it rushes toward it's destiny to meet the sea. I've tried to give movement to the words just as the swirling currents dance together as they waltz their way to the oceans and Seas of the earth.
Flowing like a river glorious
by Frank Lee Jennings
ca. 2012
Away up high the showers fall
from clouds a rushing by
to feed the little trickles
a falling from the sky
and drenching there the mountain lands
that father sea bound streams
and raise them up to seek their way
and glory in their dreams
beads forming, drops merging
tiny streamlets all sprint down
scores and hundreds fingers joining
in mountain mazes winding round
off gray ledges waters leaping
grown to rushing, skyward heaping
waves whirl bounding, ever growing
cascades riot, rainstorms blowing
a swirl fest, boiling, frothy show
charging jagged flint below
headlong into pools and hollows
motley flotsam riding high
roaring steeply down through gorges
sheer faced mossy granite hands
rays of mist birth peacock rainbows
rush away to delta lands
wider now though often parting
joined again far from the starting
merged again through many turnings
blended waters onward churning
past the farms past the houses
past the little river towns
past the fields of row crops growing
fruit grows up while roots reach down
tribes of waters dance as one
gleaming in the noon day sun
shimmering under midnight moon
stealthy in a cloudy gloom
wheeling, tilting, cupping wings
scant above tan waves
speeding flights of waterfowl
on murky river twilight bays
darkly, boldly moving ever
dawn then twilight greet the river
greet fierce squalls and monsoon bands
flotsam, jetsam joining hands
river dwellers mull the flow
net gray schools that swim below
harvest wood that floats above
glean the harvest coming home
delta river brown and grown
wise with age, youth all sown
toiling toward the sea forever
labors ever, ever flowing
flowing flowing flowing down
This is a river poem I wrote some years ago. It starts as the river forms from tiny trickles up in the mountains and grows as it rushes toward it's destiny to meet the sea. I've tried to give movement to the words just as the swirling currents dance together as they waltz their way to the oceans and Seas of the earth.
Flowing like a river glorious
by Frank Lee Jennings
ca. 2012
Away up high the showers fall
from clouds a rushing by
to feed the little trickles
a falling from the sky
and drenching there the mountain lands
that father sea bound streams
and raise them up to seek their way
and glory in their dreams
beads forming, drops merging
tiny streamlets all sprint down
scores and hundreds fingers joining
in mountain mazes winding round
off gray ledges waters leaping
grown to rushing, skyward heaping
waves whirl bounding, ever growing
cascades riot, rainstorms blowing
a swirl fest, boiling, frothy show
charging jagged flint below
headlong into pools and hollows
motley flotsam riding high
roaring steeply down through gorges
sheer faced mossy granite hands
rays of mist birth peacock rainbows
rush away to delta lands
wider now though often parting
joined again far from the starting
merged again through many turnings
blended waters onward churning
past the farms past the houses
past the little river towns
past the fields of row crops growing
fruit grows up while roots reach down
tribes of waters dance as one
gleaming in the noon day sun
shimmering under midnight moon
stealthy in a cloudy gloom
wheeling, tilting, cupping wings
scant above tan waves
speeding flights of waterfowl
on murky river twilight bays
darkly, boldly moving ever
dawn then twilight greet the river
greet fierce squalls and monsoon bands
flotsam, jetsam joining hands
river dwellers mull the flow
net gray schools that swim below
harvest wood that floats above
glean the harvest coming home
delta river brown and grown
wise with age, youth all sown
toiling toward the sea forever
labors ever, ever flowing
flowing flowing flowing down
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