Vox Populi
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Michael Simms: Waterfall
In Chatham Woods near our house
a spring bursts
from a hillside and falls
into a rocky pool
beside a small wooden bridge
where I like to stand
to watch the water
spill down the hillside
drowning
the zigzag path
to the open cave
of the storm sewer beside
the highway and from there
no doubt it flows to Sawmill Run
curving down the southern hills
to merge with the Monongahela
and Ohio
and Mississippi and from there
the sea / Yes
I can travel beyond
my body but
why not stay here
with choke cherry and service berry
native to these hills
with sumac and silver birch
from God knows how far away.
I’ve grown roots
in the soil of this mountain but I know
I am invasive
I take more than I need
I burn my way
through a place I barely belong
as I barely belong in this poem
if that’s what you want
to call this
tumbling down
the stairs this dancing
of an old man in the evening
of his life
~~~~
Copyright 2023 Michael Simms. From Strange Meadowlark (Ragged Sky, 2023).
Michael Simms is the Founding Editor of Vox Populi and the Founding Editor Emeritus of Autumn House Press.
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not for a while, spring chicken. my kids just threw me a fabulous 75th and see i’m still endlessly mouthing off. it’ll def be the last thing go
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Hahahahaha.
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i dunno michael. happily, you sure don’t sound/look like an old man in the evening of his life. just sayin’
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Thanks, Abby. I’m seventy. When is sundown?
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Oh, the author photo was taken about 5 years ago when I was a spry 65 year old.
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I think sundown is when we finally tell the dog we aren’t up to her walk. Just got back, but almost didn’t go.
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right? i think it keeps us going (or mebbe slowly kills us, like kids. not sure
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What a falling-water flow of a poem, and what a place it brings us to in the end! Some of those lines make me think of Welsh place names, which describe features of the place: “Saint Mary’s church by the white pool of the hazel trees” or (my childhood home) “head of the escarpment.”
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Lovely place names. Thank you, Maura!
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Love this poem Michael!!!!! It means so much for all of us. Mary M.
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Thanks, Mary. Long-time friend.
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Waterfalls inspire me too, Michael, and your very moving phrases:
“I’ve grown roots
in the soil of this mountain but I know
I am invasive
I take more than I need”
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Thanks, Helen!
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I sometimes overlook the double gift that written poetry gives its readers. As in Mike’s “Waterfall,” where I can hear the words tumble; and where, in the visual shape poem, I watch it dance in and out as it falls.
Thanks, twice over!
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Thank you, Louise.
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I love this cascading poem ❤️
“I can travel beyond
my body but
why not stay here
with choke cherry and service berry
native to these hills
with sumac and silver birch
from God knows how far away.”
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Thanks, Lisa!
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What a happy-making poem, Michael. And for me the names you mention are magical and exotic. I mean, who can beat ‘Monongahela’ and ‘Mississippi’. I am there with you, standing and looking at the water
spill down the hillside / drowning / the zigzag path / to the open cave. I am fresh, and green, and shiny. An old woman at the evening of her life.
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Yes, I think Americans are so used to hearing our place names, we have forgotten how musical they are. Thanks for pointing it out. I love your variation.
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I always know I’m reading a great poem when, somewhere along the way, the words are so beautiful, so effective, that I stop reading the words and start fantasizing the place.
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Thank you, John. It’s been a long time since you responded in this space. Welcome back.
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Yep, me too!
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I shared this with a friend and he wrote: “I love this poem, the diction mimicking a waterfall, the slash (caesura?) in the middle marking the kind of rock sometimes seen in a waterfall that splits the flow. There are lots of these up north.”
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Thanks, Jim.
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Thank you, everybody. The poem may not be great, but it is sincere.
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People are always telling me to stop putting down my poems, so feel i can say, “stop with the ‘not great’ already!”
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I hear you, Barbara. But there are so many truly great poets I publish in Vox Populi, like Auden, Shakespeare, Dickinson, I feel I have to make it clear that I know I’m not in their league, but I want to be…. You know?
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Lovely, Mike!
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Thanks, Syd!
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So sweet and matter of factly complete. I can use a poem like this any day, any way!
What a great “old guy” you are!
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Thank you, young man!
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I smiled from the very first line and kept smiling all through the tumble. It IS what I would call it: a poem, and such a good one.
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Laurie, you are so nice! Thank you!
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Tumbling and tumbling into this poem, just beautiful and poignant, Michael. Such a gift to be in the ordinary things of nature and life, for these magical things to be ‘ordinary’ and to cherish them for being so. You have such a gift, Michael.
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What a lovely thing to say, Noelle!
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“in the evening of his life.” So familiar but so full of joy at the same time.
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Thanks, Mel. You are one of my heroes!
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It appears we all tumbled down through your poem. Thanks for the ride and the reminder of how we take from these places love.
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Thanks, Barbara. You engage each of our authors in such encouraging ways.
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How I love this poem bursting on the page, streaming, seamlessly, and taking us tumbling down after you, then taking root after that fabulous, fabulous leap at “the sea/Yes”! there, in the middle of the poem’s rush downward…
So now I too have been in Chatam Hills, near your house, where you took root, and where I would have never been without your poem. Thank you!
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Thank you, so much, dear friend. Your poetry is so beautiful and well-crafted. Your praise is like honey.
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Like the transition from waterfall to the speaker tumbling down the stairs. Which makes the poem a jy to read.
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Thanks, John. I admire your haibun.
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Yes. This is good.
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Thanks, Mike. It was great seeing you yesterday.
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Michael writes America musically, juxtaposing that ever-present tension in who we are. Thanks for this, yes, poem.
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Thanks, Emily, for this comment, and for your separate email. I’m considering your suggestion…
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a tumbling down the mountain poem, with dancing at the end. You could take a keelboat down to New Orleans, but instead you dance in your little village, by the roaring stream. Burning your way through a place with words seems the best way to burn in most cases. Lovely, the poem, with a little ecological hook in it. Most of us have our Chatham Wood, but for many of us we have to close our eyes to see it or read a poem like yours to find it.
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Jim, your responses are so lyrical. Thank you.
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You and your other shared poets bring out my lyrical impulses…
along with admiration for the skills the poems display: their mix of craft and meaning…I was even led to buy Rose Mary Boehm’s book The Rain Girl, and enjoy her deep thoughts infused with a hint of humor. Plan to read more of the other poets too. Onward.
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Yes, I love so many of the poets in this space… Rose Mary’s The Rain Girl is a lovely book, for example.
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beautiful!
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Thanks, Claire!
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