small girl in a big window

From every window of my house
I can see water.  Lake and river surround me. 
I lie down in the green grass, but

the water isn’t always still.  Sometimes
it rages, and flimsy barriers of glass
and clapboard restrain the tempest’s damage.
The storms within the house are harder to contain. 

Tantrums, harsh words, old wounds remembered
and new wounds inflicted, our search for peace
seems eternally thwarted.  Harmony is close enough. 
We can taste it, then elusively it evanesces
like warm breath on a chilly morning.

Yet I sit, like the small girl I once was, gazing out,
shedding cares and confinements, embracing
a largeness that befuddles my imagination,
trying to fashion with my pen a poem befitting a creator
who spreads such vastness at my feet and bids me,
“Peace, be still…still in Me. 

Liz McFadzean 

Photo by Kimberly McFadzean