A Stream Flows Poem by Rory Hudson

A Stream Flows



Small boys, locked in a hopeful dream,
throw hapless stones into a stream -
resulting ripples may protect
the dream, until they intersect,
then, in a moment, disappear
to leave the water once more clear
and flowing slowly ever down
through countryside and busy town,
carrying whate’er may chance
to float upon it and enhance
beauty of nature passing by
beneath an ever-changing sky.
The stream cannot but end at last
in some great river, wide and vast,
that flows with rhythm much more slow,
yet quite inexorably, though,
into the ocean, there to merge
with the world’s waters’ heaving surge,
and to lose whatever name
it bore within this human game.

Likewise, the children who once played
with stones beside the stream, have strayed
and followed on its seaward course
into a time when they endorse
a slower flow of rivers wide
and longer times in which to bide,
until at last, old men, they see
the ending of life’s history
in vistas waiting to receive
the past for which they can but grieve;
all to dissolve, and all to end
in deep blue oceans which will rend
last vestiges of identity
in transcendental unity.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
James James 23 June 2009

Loved this. Flows like the Murray, Ripples like the Onkaparinga. Carries the reader wistfully along.

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Caybin Sturgess 05 June 2009

wow this is really good i can picture it all soo well like the flowing of the stream into the river and great medaphor the whole poem is :)

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Rory Hudson

Rory Hudson

Adelaide, Australia
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