“Make Me River” by Abigail Carroll (poem)

---

Make me river, cold
with mountain, green
with quiver, silver in

the run and churn of
winter leaving, valley
waking, sheet moss

breathing. Make me
flash of mica, drift of
foam. O Lord of flux,

make these dry bones
flow, teach me to spill,
pool, glide, fall, tutor me

to long for depth, seek
downward paths, indwell
the low. Oh teach me

liturgy of keel, swirl,
flume, the breaking into
mist, the pull, the press,

the song. Oh form me
into blood of bedrock,
quest of glacier, dream

of sea, release me, set
me free to course, surge,
pour, sweep, issue, eddy,

shower, plummet, roll.
O Lord of flood, O Lord
of spray, unstill my soul.

From Habitation of Wonder (Cascade / Wipf & Stock, 2018). Used with permission.

Abigail Carroll is a poet whose work, as Walter Brueggemann called it, is “an unflinching witness to the reality and goodness of God.” She has authored the collections Cup My Days Like Water (Cascade, 2023), Habitation of Wonder (Cascade, 2018), and A Gathering of Larks: Letters to Saint Francis from a Modern-Day Pilgrim (Eerdmans, 2017), and her poems have also been published in anthologies and periodicals. She makes her home in Vermont, where she serves as associate pastor at Church at the Well. In addition to writing, she enjoys walking, photographing nature, and playing piano.