by Madeleine Roberts

When the rocks cried out for weeping

I knelt to the ground and wept.

This sphere is too great for cupped hands

like water at the fountainhead

overflowing, baptism of reflections.

I am quiet multitudes past

the sum of my fears, though the hours waver

in high tide far above the bedrock

where I once stood. Sometimes there comes

a candle on the water, lit by

stronger hands and pushed off in faith

upon the current. And so

a dripping flame holds by the spirit’s side

as nothing else today, when

I could not bear to feel for all the being.

Flood