Anchor Stone

author’s note:

“These aren’t just words talking.”
          -- Mary Oliver


ANCHOR STONE

I hesitate to explore my anger

because I know a flood
of grief and doubt awaits
beneath my foggy roil.

But still I dive down

because the fighter within
wants to battle my fear
of drowning and learn
how to swim

and because
this intrepid scholar
desires to discover
what lurks beneath

and also because
my beleaguered self
sometimes finds relief--

if I go deep enough
into those murky waters
sometimes
below all the hubbub
I’ll again touch
the anchor stone:

a wisdom within me
and yet, not from me:

beyond reason
yet, solidly reassuring--
wordlessly whispering
what I’m still too dim to see:

all is as it needs to be.

An idea I’m able to accept
when I resurface
by telling myself:

if this life had been other
than what it was and is
I might never have known
that core anchor stone.

© 2019, Michael R. Patton
Listening to Silence: poetry ebook