By: John Jacobson
A spring flows across
an overgrown meadow
between blue and yellow clouds
of wild comfrey and buttercups.
It pushes against a boulder
as if it wants what is
on the other side,
but the boulder holds
its place, and when the water
meets another, it bends
the other way. Contours of land
send it to places it wouldn’t go
otherwise. It meanders on
beneath a fallen tree,
passing a basswood
with pale new seed wings
that will soon bloom to flowers
and over roots of a willow with
narrow leaves. It passes
unfurling ostrich ferns
and gathers into a dark mirror
under shadows of maple and beech.
There I ask you, “Isn’t that
like life? The shape of its course
is formed by constraints.”
And you say, “It’s wanting
what can’t be reached, then
finding something new.”
John Jacobson lives in the Catskill Mountains of New York. His writing has appeared in many publications including About Place Journal, Aji Magazine, The Curlew, Intima Journal of Narrative Medicine, Longridge Review and Remembered Arts Journal. His poetry has been internationally anthologized. His essays have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a John Burroughs Nature Essay Award.
"I never really know where a poem is going when I start. I work it over and over. It turns one way, then the other. I read it aloud, listening to how it sounds. I re-write it again. Writing is a way to figure things out.
I’ve been a caregiver for my wife Claudia for almost fourteen years. She has a rare neurological disease, Neuromyletis optica. It has left her bedbound. We face obstacles rising from her illness every day. We have to find new ways to do nearly everything.
One day I passed the spring described in “Finding Something New.” Water flowed up against a rock, turned the other way and went on. I thought about how obstacles shape our lives. Beyond them there is always something new."