All my life I have known <br />The shape of a track through sand and rock and stone <br />to the edge of pools where dark shadows <br />fill the water's face with reflected sky and willows <br />I have chased fish and hummed songs <br />Here where my childhood belongs <br />in the shallow streams and billabongs <br /> <br />Here I watched the current drag a paper boat <br />and lay belly-down on the timbered bridge <br />as it passed beneath, onward to I knew not where <br />my little ship of hope in the world afloat <br />and the chill of night descended and the curlew's sad note <br /> <br />Where does the water come from, where <br />does it go? <br />What is this ache in my soul as I see <br />it rushing below? <br />Am I not more than a dropp in a stream? <br />And all my desires, are they yet just a dream? <br />For the world is grown larger than a place <br />on a track, in a town, on a map, or my fingers <br />turning a globe, turning <br />And I will forsake the quiet pools <br />and follow the tumbling waters onward <br />with a blood pulse and a heart's yearning<br /><br />Josephine Collett<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/boy-on-a-bridge/
