Vol. 2. / 185.) Do Not Look For The Expected

Do not look for the expected ---

You’ll find it and be disappointed

For what you expect will blind you

To what you haven’t thought of yet

Which, had you not expected to see

What you already knew, you might

Have come across it, and seen it

Enough to actually notice it ---

Many paint pleasantly the surface

Appearances, and are clever at it ---

But always a few get to be underneath

And feel the undercurrent ---

These know --- that if they cannot feel

An undercurrent they are painting

Only a series of things ---

Which though novel and attractive

At first --- soon grow tiresome

There is an undercurrent --- the reality

Beneath all appearances everywhere.

It is the sensing of this --- behind ---

All things that lends the power that

Makes the eye see and the hand move

In ways which result in things --- alive

That can breathe --- and effect change

   *

A Book is like a Tranquil Stream

A book is like a tranquil stream 

   it has a kind of liquid life

Beside the inner watered willow trees

   that calms my soul

That bends around my growing stems

Though it take me savage in several places               

Falling through the loop                                   

As book streams do, in sudden turns

When taken from their natural course

   in limestone lands

They run in sunken caverns, broad

   in tunnels wide

Seeking there to challenge, keen

Though they be but pallid streams 

   that greet me:

Another’s sighted undercurrent, yet 

   alive with hidden lines 

      they touch my mind . . .

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight
Part 1  # 27

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project