Christ Walks on the Adventure River Wave Pool

Christ Walks on the Adventure River Wave Pool

Graham Hillard

Memphis, 1989

How strange to see myself submerged that day,
As if enacting an afflictive dream
Of drowning. Memory can place me there,
On the blue-concrete apron of the pool,
But how I drifted past all reach or reason
Is mystery, the stuff of midnight sweat
And prayer: Yea, though I swam, et cetera.
I know I thought that I was going to die,
Saw sunlight on the surface like a rope
That snapped with each new wave, each pummeling
That swept me, nine years old, below again.
What happened? Who but God can say? And yet
I know I heard His footsteps on the water,
Felt hands that weren’t my own bearing me up.

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Graham Hillard
Poet & Professor

Graham is the editor of The Cumberland River Review and an associate professor of English at Trevecca Nazarene University. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife and children.

Photography by Fernando Torres