Water Always Wins

The final poem of "The Quiet: Poems of Endurance"

Water Always Wins — November 14, 2025

Crashing surf, steady drips,
moisture seeping, storm surge raging—
matters little
what form it’s in.
Water always wins.

Waves beat stony shore
until it fits inside an hourglass.
Mountains erode,
iron corrodes—
nothing hard can stay.

And though I dam the flood
lest His precious bottle overflow,
and though I plead for some relief
from drought when there should be
downpours—

There is no dance
to make it start,
no chant, no chart,
no magic medicine
to bring it to an end.

The flow begins and takes away—
salt stinging, current bringing
me along. Who knows
what shape you’ll find me in?
Water always wins.


Today I received this wonderful endorsement for the book.

What touches me in The Quiet: Poems of Endurance is already present in the title itself: endurance is often quiet. It is not always dramatic, visible, or victorious in the way we usually imagine. Sometimes endurance is simply continuing, breathing, praying, waiting, and allowing life, grief, and even silence to shape us without losing the deepest part of who we are.

This became very clear to me in Jonathan Wilson’s poem “Water Always Wins.” In this poem, water is not only water. It becomes grief, time, pressure, memory, and perhaps even grace. It comes as crashing surf, as steady drips, as storm surge, as drought and flood. It wears down stones, erodes mountains, corrodes iron, and carries the human soul into unknown shapes. Yet the poem is not without hope. It reminds us that we may be reshaped by suffering, but we are not necessarily destroyed by it.

For me, this is the gift of Wilson’s poetry: it does not offer cheap comfort, but it gives language to those who endure. It speaks gently to the wounded places of life and reminds us that even when water wins, the soul may still continue its journey toward mystery, mercy, and becoming.

-- Dr. Samuel Lee, president of Foundation Academy of Amsterdam