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Sorrow
You are as a river
Coursing through my youth:
Brutal, untamed, uprooting
Trees and shifting boulders
As in this spring, careening desperately
You fly enraged down the mountain’s slope.
Yet in due season, summer into fall
Mountain side becomes a plain
Your pace is slowed and your more placid surface
Robs less life from the land around
Though still in unseen depths you cut
A channel deep as you are wide.
Sorrow
I do not beg you vanish
Or leave me alone, unmarked
Only that once your torrent has been quelled
By time and winter’s cool
That you, in another time
A slower, calmer place
Would begin to leave behind
Some of what you’ve taken.
And that this aching wound
You’ve cut across my back
Would become the river’s bed
So deep and wide
Carrying the living water
Flowing from the Sufferer’s side
Until the end of ages comes.
This poem was written by Jonathan Goossen reflecting on his brother Josh’s battle with schizophrenia. He lives in Saskatoon with his wife Cindy and their sons Jacob and Luke Joshua.
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