Water Poem by Bernard Kennedy

As a youthful boy I swam
in local river heading down
To city bay of Dublin
From the mountain path.
H20 does not quite explain the joy,
the water polo game and happy joy.
A stream is but a windows of a wider bay.

Or fishing with a handmade stocking net
on cane, in river mountain stream.

Wadeing over, wadeable, as a wading bird,
on brown pebble stones,
that cooling bed, a foot massage
that calmed.Like Baptism, the water
opened up another bay and washed away
all previous discontent.Some water into wine
its miracle ontogenic.

And now when travelling all about,
be it Seine, or Danube, or
Sultans Marmara, or Sailors Cove,
in Dunmore East,
my thoughts remember
my youthful joy.
For did not Narcissus
gaze in adoration
at waters edge?
A mirror stage of growth.

Another side is sadness
where sea claims lives and great
the sorrows come. The shipwrecks
marking lives torn and lost.
May Christ who walked on water
bring those suffering sadness
a calm. And water into wine bring
forth.

And when we pour the water for
Our spiritual joy,
remember waters power.
For H20 cannot describe
it's ebb and flow.
It's undertow.