IN DAPPLED SUNLIGHT

 I move slowly now, now that I’m nearing the end of my journey.

Content. Feeling serene is how I would put it.

I still have some troubles ahead. A weir I can view. But I can manage, for I have the knowledge to cope.

Oh, how I remember the earlier times. My birth, bubbling up from the earth. Dancing, turning this way and that without a care, with abandonment, rushing headlong ‘neath bridges and over metalled lanes.

Sometimes I would rest for a while, still, reflecting the blue blue sky under which I lay.

Yet at other times I have felt the storm clouds, been battered by hail and rain, unable to take shelter for there was none.

Winter snows and ice have slowed my progress.

But now I go slowly, beneath overhanging branches in dappled sunlight.

And when I have attained the end, still I will not have finished, for I will give all to the larger mass that which I have made.

And it will always be.

Paul Dominic Gray   July 2019