Coming from a world
where planes collide
and every doctrine's
full of holes
and boys pack handguns
in their lunchboxes,
to find, two miles back
into the woods,
this water, falling
like a curtain of light
across the black
geometry of stones,
seems to chance everything.
Simply to know that here,
in the middle of nowhere,
there is something so
unreasonably beautiful;
simply to know
that when I leave,
my whole soul quieted,
this water will keep on
weaving its gauzy light
across these stones,
even if I never find my
way back here again.
-- Deb Cooper