Roberta Hill Whiteman: "Waterfall at Como Park"

(Curator's Note: Most likely this poem is a creative response to the Hamm Memorial Waterfall in Como Park, St. Paul, Minnesota, which I've had the pleasure of visiting. For a lovely audiovisual meditation on that waterfall, see this four-minute video.)

She's always walking off the edge,
allowing the wellspring of herself
to fall away without worry.

Even in a furious wind, she's out here,
shaking her glinting spray across the sand stone.
Through thick August afternoons,

she gazes at the sky and stays
poised enough to welcome sparrows.
Both structure and flux, she trembles

as she collects pebbles and leaves, while
her basin grows deeper, more substantial.
Those days when love is distant,

I return to her and learn how she sinks,
climbs, and leaps into abundant moments
where she gives without purpose

or boundary. She teaches me to believe
in this—it's best we're blind
to that which moving, moves us.

In her great-hearted leaps, she's my anchor,
gathering shadow and sun
without once stopping her song.

"Waterfall at Como Park" by Roberta Hill Whiteman, from Philadelphia Flowers: Poems. © Holy Cow! Press, 1996.

Photography credit: "Waterfall at Lake Como," by Clara James (originally color).