Lingua aqua

POET, OPEN WIDE THE WINDOW



The Little Mermaid



Poetry’s the language of the heart and mind in sympathy, and such a tidy way this is of saying it’s a shame this isn’t all there is, but it gets messier because there’s something altogether more, I find, when sweet and simple lines occur to me — a kind of calling, quiet, firm, and not to be denied: O Poet, open wide the window. So I try, oh, yes, I try — the kind of word smug masters love to pounce upon (“Don’t try, just DO”) — Do you not see, the window’s stuck, alas; I almost give it up and start a nap, but there’s a tapping at the pane.

I try again, with better luck this time. And then I couldn’t say at all which spirit comes and carries me away: a rogueish ray of sunlight, free to sail the skies above whatever sea or continent we fancy – where the zebras are, perhaps, or Bimini or Madagascar. But if not the sun, the sigh, then — breathing out and breathing in, each exhalation stirring in me an infinity of possibility; the IN breath offers comfort, intimate, as if I were a baby in the womb and knew the mother’s heartbeat as my own.

Spongebob's Underwater Kingdom

If not the womb, the rain, creating rivulets upon the old brick path, creating streams that grow with heaven’s generosity and wend their way to greater streams and thence to oceans, thence to clouds and mist and I have only floated on the rivers to the sea with pelicans and fish for company, and  mermaids genuine as you and me. The mermaids led me to their underwater universe no human on her own could possibly discover.

Effortless my movement is on air, in water — everywhere on earth, in space, I go, loose-limbed and unafraid, conveyed by ships or chariots of grace; and what began as mutterings of love undisciplined and tapping on the windowpane, an invitation to embrace eternity, became the language of our common soul. But I am not an angel yet and have let Ego’s pen distort the pure, clear vision I was given, and corrupt the soul’s impression.

So I pray that something fine, a slender scraping of divine resplendence, might escape this poetry of mine and drift like thistledown into your willing spirit. May you find whatever it contains of heaven’s truth, in heaven’s time.





...a slender scraping of divine respendence