Emptying Out
       

Let me be like the river that pours through
limestone-walled bluffs, iron-stained,
rushing past rock: let me empty out into
green valleys, soften, spread, roaring
only an echo now, paths meandering,
letting go all that was carried for headlong
miles, become the rich alluvial muck
of backwater, sloughs where the great blue
heron hunts, motionless, and the Parula
warbler flits, cattail banks where the blackbirds
nest, sandspits noisy with circling gulls,
mudflats tracked by the egrets, idling
before the Mississippi gathers me in.

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Copyright © 2014 Robin Chapman All rights reserved
from One Hundred White Pelicans
Tebot Bach
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission