A mile from home’s a ridge between two streams
that so few know stands as a great divide —
two river basins, one on either side —
that splits the continent in two extremes.
The one, a prayerful, pious flow, it seems,
that hushes, humble, still and deep and wide;
the other takes a plunge, a boulder ride,
returns, and as it hits the rocks, blasphemes.
Which side I walk depends on where I go.
To town — I cross and crisscross furious spray
as Paul did on his last sojourn to Rome.
But if I think to take the other way
through meadows and along the deeper flow
before I know it I’ve meandered home.
Geoffrey Smagacz’s writing has appeared in Candelabraum Poetry Magazine, Ascent Aspirations, Times Newsweekly and Midwest Book Review. He spends as much time as possible at his lake house in Sullivan County, and sometimes blogs about it: http://mohicanlake.blogspot.com.