the deepening ground

Life is full of transitions. For me, the end of summer comes a month early with a return to the classroom. Those days of school starting after Labor Day are long forgotten. Just before my summer vacation came to a close, I intentionally spent one last Sunday seated in my camping chair in the middle of Wolf Creek. I brought a pen and my pocket journal with me and took time to soak in the moment while my nine-year-old dug new trenches in the creek-bed to channel the flow of the stream around one of our many dams.

Since then, I’ve toiled with a poem about that liminal experience, taking us into the autumnal equinox and my birthday. In the midst of all of life’s changes, my greatest struggle has been to maintain peace, despite knowing that I have been left with a peace that passes all understanding, beyond what this world can ever offer. Like William Butler Yeats, I, too, find myself away from my Innisfree, standing on gray-and-white tiled floors in a small classroom packed with thirty student desks. But I’m getting better at not just hearing those peaceful waters “in the deep heart’s core,” but living, steadfast in that peace as a fount of living water. This poem celebrates what it means to be steadfast in peace in the midst of the changing seasons of life.

(Unlike most of my sonnets, this one takes up the Petrarchan form, allowing me to develop two ideas more fully with a clear turn that still links the two parts (the octave and sestet) with echoed diction and imagery. Like a true Shakespearean sonnet, however, it utilizes iambic pentameter, the meter of the heartbeat. There’s also quite a bit of assonance and alliteration to link ideas together. If I ever get around to podcasts, I’ll geek out on this in more detail!)

Steadfast Despite Liminality

By Vincent H. Anastasi 2023

Today I seek the creek-bed for my rest,
to cease my labors under worry's weight,
to drift unmoored while grounded in this place
while waters wash my feet and soul refresh.
A summer Sunday settles in to bless
the soul who stops to sabbath in the shade,
and while the current carries on unfazed,
I will imbibe the stillness to excess.
Tomorrow when I rise to cruel alarms,
exchanging birdsong for the measured bells,
O, let me sing unfettered with this peace!
Though freedom flows restrained by routine's arms
and nature's vistas shrink to sterile cells,
within the boundless stream I'll never cease.