At the Lip is a poem from The Vow, Lucas Varro’s poetry publication for serious, compressed poems shaped by image, silence, pressure, and afterlife.

The poem begins with a single natural event: a river reaching the edge of a waterfall. It does not turn that event into a lesson. It stays with the fall itself — the gathering, the drop, the rock, the spray, the swallow crossing briefly through the white violence, the pool holding its darkness beneath the roar.

The result is a poem of motion and stillness, scale and exactness, force and restraint.

Excerpt:

The mountain opens its mouth
and the river goes through.

All morning, all century,
the green body gathers
from seep, root, cloud,
from snow the sun loosened
grain by grain
on the high stone.

Then the edge.

No hesitation.
Not courage.
Nothing in it choosing.

The river reaches
the cut in the world
and is taken by it.

Down—

not once,

but over and over,

sheet into rope,
rope into smoke,
smoke into cold beads
flung back
against the fern.

The cliff stands still
so falling
can have a shape.

In the full poem, the waterfall continues to break and gather, the pool holds its silence, and the river moves on below the fall, carrying the sky in pieces between the walls.

Continue reading: At the Lip at The Vow on Substack.