Trusting the Turn

Sunrise Along the St. Marys River

Some journeys are not marked by speed or certainty, but by faith practiced quietly along the way. I’ve been thinking about how life teaches us to move—when to press forward, when to ease, and when to trust what we cannot yet see. This poem reflects that kind of journey, one shaped less by arrival than by how faithfully we are carried through each turn.

This poem was shaped during a brief writing retreat in a small riverside town, miles from modernity, where time still seems willing to slow. I worked within old walls once visited by Marjorie Rawlings, overlooking the St. Marys River as it moved steadily beyond the window. Between early mornings and long stretches of silence, the river became a companion—present, patient, unhurried. While working on The Matriarch’s Legacy, its quiet persistence began to mirror the story unfolding on the page, and "Trusting the Turn" emerged not as something written, but something noticed.

Trusting the Turn

The river has a thousand turns to take.

It bends around the stone, refusing stillness,

learning its own rhythm as it goes,

finding a way without needing to name it.

What rushes forward eventually eases.

Calm gathers. An island forms by patience.

Few linger in the shade of the palm,

yet roots hold fast where the water keeps moving.

The river does not argue with each bend,

nor grieve the paths it never came to follow.

It moves with trust that motion is enough.

And rests by yielding to the way it’s led.

It follows where it is quietly drawn,

without requiring sight to trust the course is sure.

The river rests in hands it leans upon

and ends its journey held—just as it began.

We are carried more often than we know.