April 12, 2018

Steady  Voice



Don Hynes



The winds are up from the south

pushing white caps over grey water,

the Pacific storm reaching over the Olympics,

Vancouver Island, to the inland sea.

Most of the shorebirds are hunkered down,

Canada geese tucked into their lee cover,

even the otter seem to be laying low.

There’s a beautiful excitement on the wind,

as if the vast ocean were breathing upon us,

carrying messages from the far east

of change and new life.

Gulls flare up into the gusts —

storms won’t put them off,

but there are no sails within sight

and we too take shelter.

The sea has begun to roll,

the long fetch of southerly wind

bringing the broad channel awake,

yet hundreds of feet below in a stone-lined canyon

the dark is unperturbed, the water still.

The depth will not roil as the surface churns

the deeper voice steady in the sweeping wind.

I want to arc like the gull, dive like a whale

into the vast darkness, but I keep my post,

calm in the great change upon us,

finding myself in the wind, the wave

and the deep grey sea, vast and unmoved.













© donhynes.com



3 comments:

John Gray said...

Timeless imagery! Words birthed from the very place you describe, Don. Thank you.
---John

Don Hynes said...

Thank you John.

The Great Cosmic Story said...

Awesome. I love this poem Don, and I love all your poems – great poems like this one with a great love, and minor poems with just slightly lesser love. The enduring impression here, for me, is this Presence – your Presence at your post, regardless of what you may want, such as arcing and diving in the winds and the waves. And here you are, in the midst of it all, calm, vast and unmoved, and here I am in that same place in that same way, with you. Wow!