Editor’s Choice

The Science of Water

    by Larina Warnock

When rivers swell and spill over

embankments into fields and onto asphalt,

they mean nothing by it. They’re just

doing what rivers do. The same is true of grief

dripping as it does down the delicate

seams of our hearts. We would be smart

to recall that spring runoff

never drains the world of water, but

instead deposits silt and nutrients through

farmland, brings hands together to rebuild,

creates the foundation for new lives and new starts.

It is a temporary sense of madness.

The same is true of sadness, speaking as it does

not from a place of absence, but a place of love,

from a pool of memories so precious

it takes a flood to make room for new sentiment.

When spring comes to a close, the river remains

visible in the veins of sweet peas and lettuce,

in water stains on walls downtown,

reminders that when the waters still,

the world is only modestly changed. The same is

true of sorrow. The same is true of us.

© 2014  Larina Warnock

Larina Warnock is a mother, wife, teacher, and writer who believes strongly in the power of forward motion, advocacy, and reaching out. Her work has appeared in The Oregonian, Poet's Market, Space & Time Magazine, and others, as well as in Touch: The Journal of Healing. Her chapbook, Guitar Without Strings, is available from The Lives You Touch Publications. You can follow her at http://www.larinawarnock.com and http://larina.wordpress.com.