With Your Tides I Turn (Poem)
Dear Water,
With your tides I turn
These lessons have I learned
//
Your morning dew is an invitation
To start our day with shining brilliance
//
Your fluid geometry illuminates our humble creations
Like the glimmer on a spider’s web
//
Your ripples are nature’s messenger
That we might only break stillness with perfect equanimity
//
Your colors remind us
That only with rain may we find rainbows
//
Your smell instructs us
To find the life within emptiness
//
When your streams are met with stones
You teach us to bend around our obstacles with the virtue of non-resistance
//
Your oceans whisper in our ears
That serene tranquility awaits
When we take a deep breath And go down deeper
//
Urine means letting go
No explanation needed there
//
May we rest in between the space of perfect form
And radical imperfection
Like the patterned flow of your mysterious waves
//
What is the sound of true healing
If not the trickle of your brook
On its quest to rejoin the ocean?
//
May we be reminded
That you are the thread that weaves together this tapestry of life
And that my body
Is the canvas
//
How quick we are to sip your bounty
Through the teet of a plastic straw
And in dilution of coca cola syrup
Wonder how we forgot the taste of life itself
//
How bizarre a gesture
To thank the host that gave us life
By spilling our muck into your oceanic womb
Infecting the lives of our underwater family
And with pride and fancy suits we order the buttered Red Snapper
Forgetting that it’s us who we truly poison
//
How quick we are to forget that it’s not just hydration
But your wisdom that we drink
And your wisdom that we dehydrate ourselves of
//
Dear water
May we flow back in to the source of your life force
Like a humble fountain that fills itself up
With the strength to shape mountains
And the gentleness to feed a butterfly
//
Dear water
With your tides I turn
These lessons have I learned
