Where sunlit waters silver-spill,
The pines stand watch upon the hill;
The tumbled stones in quiet lay,
And greet the hush of breaking day.
The tide draws in with gentle hand,
To smooth the edges of the land;
While spruce and fern, in seaward air,
Breathe out a psalm as soft as prayer.
O sea, O stone, O steadfast tree,
You keep the Maker’s poetry;
And I, who pause upon this stair,
Am blessed to find His glory there.
Two green shoulders stoop to drink the lake,
And in that stillness, heaven stirs awake,
Clouds unhurried, psalm-like, drift and pass
Above the water’s slow, unshattered glass.
Silence here has learned the tongue of light,
The far shore dissolving, tender, into white;
And something more than summer lingers near,
A door left open in the quiet air.
The sun descends and sets the tide aflame,
As if the deep remembered God by name.
Each wave that breaks rehearses our own breath,
A brief ascent, a bowing down to death.
The gold dissolves; the horizon drinks the light;
Creation sighs, and hands the day to night.
Yet still the sea, unmastered and unmade,
Keeps time with One whose glory does not fade.
And I, small witness on this trembling shore,
Am taught by waves what words cannot restore:
That all which rises must in mercy fall,
And falling, find the Love that holds it all.
Along the silvered edge of tide,
Where restless waters meet the shore,
A sanderling on stilted stride
Attends the sea’s unhurried lore.
His feathered mantle, ash and snow,
A cloak of cloud upon the swell;
He bends where shallow ripples flow
And gleans what humble tides foretell.
No hurried thought disturbs the air,
He keeps a slower, older creed:
To walk the margin, stoop, and share
The morning’s small, sufficient need.
And I, who watch him from the sand,
Would learn the wisdom of his art,
To take what’s given, hand to hand,
Between the waves that cross the heart.
Down mossy ledge and stone the waters fall,
A hidden calm the pines and hollows call.
Through cleft of rock the silver ribbons run,
And braid their prayer beneath the veiled sun.
Here silence learns the tongue the wild has known,
God’s whisper cut in water, moss, and stone.
Along the reed-lined water’s quiet crease,
He stands in olive stillness, robed in peace.
A statue cast in bronze and dappled slate,
He tends the silver current like a gate.
No restless wing disturbs the morning air;
He holds the hush of reverence and prayer.
The minnows script their sermons in the stream;
He reads each line as though it were a dream.
Then sudden as a psalm, he strikes for death,
And lifts a wriggling silver on his breath.
He shakes the river from his crested crown,
And folds again where willow boughs bend down.
The marshy world grows still, the reeds convene
To honor him, the priest of pond and green.
