The Broken Water

Out, in the morning with the azure sky, And the water runs with a broken song, Wild, it plucks at the shimmers and feels them lie, Where the songs are quick and the leaves are strong.

And the light spills over the grass so sweet, Where I walk through forests, alone, unconfined; I plunge my hands in the silt at my feet, And I keep my heart to the calling mind.

The young brown earth, the lowly and meek, Will open her arms to my lonely soul; There, in the laughter, the low timber creek Will warm my heart as I kneel in the shoal.

For the broken water calls as it winds, Oh the laugh and the spring of its life. The pulse of a world, where the sky still finds The pure, the true, and the bright without strife.

• David Campbell