Difficult Run

One of the few poems I wrote several years ago for a college poetry workshop that I still think is pretty good.

From where I sit on this river bank
I can see
A giant slab of granite
That has slipped from a mountain face
And into an icy gorge
Where a frigid river runs.
In the springtime,
With the snow melt,
An unyielding current brings the force of ten trains.
Yet today,
And every day of my life,
That rock settles defiantly into the river’s muddy bed
Unwilling to dare a journey down river,
Choosing instead
To let the river carry it away,
One particle at a time.

Next to this rock stands another,
Seemingly oblivious to the riverbed shift
That threatens to pry it away from its mate.
It’s a lovely rock,
The most beautiful I have ever seen.
And it breaks my heart to know that
Someday
This ruinous river will have her way with it.

Is it difficult being a rock in a river?
No. Not when you love the river.