Whakapapa: I started writing this poem 6 weeks after the February 22nd quake in Christchurch. I was distressed after receiving an email from the resthome my mother had been evacuated to in Wellington. The email said Mum had lost her appetite & 4 kgs since she’d arrived. It seemed (to me) that if this rate of weight loss continued, mum was likely to die. I got in a very active mode… doing everything I could… getting churned up… like a river in flood… but getting nowhere. I felt furious at the Christchurch District Hospital Board, who were making policies based on ‘beds’ & bringing ‘people’ back… when they had ‘fair’ policies in place. I felt I was not being listened to. I felt powerless, frustrated. As I sat down to write this psalm, a picture of a trout came to me. In the poem the trout is an image of the Self, the Inner Christ. The trout is instinctively one with Creation. It knows where & how to be when the river surges & churns. I thought of a favourite fishing spot on the Crooked River where I’d seen trout sheltering behind a huge rock when the river was up. I felt I needed to find that natural place in myself. The poem is an attempt to do so. It is written from the viewpoint of the Self.