water dance

.

Water is the most extraordinary substance!

Practically all its properties are anomalous,
which enabled life to use it as building material for its machinery.

Life is water dancing to the tune of solids.


—Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

.

syllables of water

 

.

Beloved, let us once more praise the rain.

Let us discover some new alphabet, For this, the often praised; and be ourselves, The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf, The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone, And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,- Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion, Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done.

There is an oriole who, upside down, Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,- Under a tree as dead and still as lead;

There is a single leaf, in all this heaven Of leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig: The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caught Upon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs;

There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroom Which catches three drops from the stooping cloud.

The timid bee goes back to the hive; the fly Under the broad leaf of the hollyhock Perpends stupid with cold; the raindark snail Surveys the wet world from a watery stone... 
And still the syllables of water whisper:

The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait In the dark room; and in your heart I find One silver raindrop,-on a hawthorn leaf,- Orion in a cobweb, and the World.

—Conrad Aiken (1889-1973)

.

roll on

 

.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! 

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; 

Man marks the earth with ruin, – his control 

Stops with the shore.  

—Lord Byron

.

so

 

.

So a river can exist inside the sea.

And the sea will have no reverie

inside the letters of a name… 

—Elizabeth Willis
Cursive, excerpt 

.

love is always too much

 

 

.

Like the water
of a deep stream,
love is always too much.

We did not make it.

Though we drink till we burst,
we cannot have it all,
or want it all.

In its abundance
it survives our thirst.

In the evening 
we come down to the shore
to drink our fill,

and sleep,
while it flows
through the regions of the dark.

It does not hold us,
except we keep returning 
to its rich waters

thirsty.

We enter,
willing to die,
into the commonwealth 
of its joy. 

—Wendell Berry

.

the sea is everything

.

The sea is everything. 

It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. 

Its breath is pure and healthy. 

It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, 
for he feels life stirring on all sides. 

The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and 
wonderful existence. 

It is nothing but love and emotion; 
it is the Living Infinite. 

 

—Jules Verne

.

 

miraculous

   .   

Water flows from high in the mountains

Water runs deep in the Earth

Miraculously, water comes to us,
And sustains all life.

—Thich Nhat Hanh

. 

    

# 1619 The Taste Of Water

.

Scott Bergey

.

in excelsis, excerpt

.

we stand on the shore
loving its pulse
as it swallows the stars,
and has since it all began
and will continue into oblivion,
past our knowing
 

—anne sexton

.

 

to drink

 

 .

I want to gather your darkness
in my hands, to cup it like water
and drink.

I want this in the same way
as I want to touch your cheek -
it is the same -

the way a moth will come
to the bedroom window in late September,
beating and beating its wings against cold glass,

the way a horse will lower
his long head to water, and drink,
and pause to lift his head and look,
and drink again,

taking everything in with the water,
everything.

—Jane Hirshfield

.




 

 

not to worry

 

.

Water is something you cannot hold. 

Like men. 
I have tried.

—Anne Carson
The Anthropology of Water 

.

my dear

. 

my dear,
we are all made of water.
it’s okay to rage. sometimes
it’s okay to rest. to recede.

—Sanober Khan

.

we are that

 

.

We forget we’re 
mostly water
till the rain falls
and every atom
in our body
starts to go home

  
—Albert Huffstickler

.

question

.

It is mist and rose of eternal morning. 

Moon-honey that flows from buried stars. 

What is holy baptism but God become water?

—Federico García Lorca

Collected Poems

.

body water

.

Previously we thought body movement was accomplished by a series of ratchets, levers, and pulleys. Lately, this machine model has begun to break down.

Connective tissue is the ocean within us, and, in fact, contains the same basic proportions of elements, salts, and carbon compounds found in sea water…it becomes more fluid the more it is moved; the more sedentary, the more ‘dried out’ it becomes. We literally moisten ourselves and make more variations of movement and action possible.

The water within us seems to have a sort of mind […]

The new model sees the body water itself shaping us. That is, we do not contain it like a bottle; it holds itself together like 'standing waves’ and shapes our more solid structures around it.

—Neil Douglas-Klotz

.

wait - what ?

.

the sea

.

Before our human dream (or terror) wove
Mythologies, cosmogonies, and love,
Before time coined its substance into days,
The sea, the always sea, existed: was.

Who is the sea? Who is that violent being,
Violent and ancient, who gnaws the foundations
Of earth? He is both one and many oceans;
He is abyss and splendor, chance and wind. 

Who looks on the sea, sees it the first time,

Every time, with the wonder distilled
From elementary things—from beautiful
Evenings, the moon, the leap of a bonfire.

Who is the sea, and who am I? The day
That follows my last agony shall say.


—Jorge Luis Borges
Alastair Reid version

.

some(times

.

There's a storm outside
And the gap between crack and thunder
Crack and thunder
Is closing in
Is closing in

The rain floods gutters
And makes a great sound on concrete

On a flat roof, there's a boy
Leaning against a wall of rain
Aerial held high
Calling "Come on thunder
Come on thunder!"

Sometimes, when I look deep in your eyes I swear I can see your soul
Sometimes, when I look deep in your eyes I swear I can see your soul

It's a monsoon
And the rain lifts lids off cars
Spinning buses like toys
Stripping them to chrome
Across the bay, the waves are something else
Picking up fishing boats and spewing them on the shore

The boy's hit
Lit up against the sky
Like a sign
Like a neon sign

Then he crumples
Drops into the gutter
Cut strings
Legs twitching

The flood swells his clothes
Delivers him on
Delivers him on

Sometimes, when I look deep in your eyes I swear I can see your soul
Sometimes, when I look deep in your eyes I swear I can see your soul

There's four new colors in the rainbow
An old man's taking Polaroids
But all he catches
Is endless rain
Endless rain
Endless rain
Endless rain

He says, "Listen!"
Takes my head
Puts my ear to his
And I swear I can hear the sea


—Lester Piggott

.

questions found under running water

 

.

The young child, Christ, is straight and wise

And asks questions of the old men, questions

Found under running water for all children

And found under shadows thrown on still waters

By tall trees looking downward, old and gnarled.

Found to the eyes of children alone, untold,

Singing a low song in the loneliness.

And the young child, Christ, goes on asking

And the old men answer nothing and only know love

For the young child. Christ, straight and wise. 

—Carl Sandburg

.

love letters

  

.

Every day, priests minutely examine the Law

And endlessly chant complicated sutras.

Before doing that, though, they should learn

How to read the love letters sent by the wind

and rain, the snow and moon.

—Ikkyu

Sonya Arutzen version

.

rain

 

.

With thick strokes of ink the sky fills with rain.
Pretending to run for cover but secretly praying for more rain.

Over the echo of the water, I hear a voice saying my name.
No one in the city moves under the quick sightless rain.

The pages of my notebook soak, then curl. I’ve written:
“Yogis opened their mouths for hours to drink the rain.”

The sky is a bowl of dark water, rinsing your face.
The window trembles; liquid glass could shatter into rain.

I am a dark bowl, waiting to be filled.
If I open my mouth now, I could drown in the rain.

I hurry home as though someone is there waiting for me.
The night collapses into your skin. I am the rain.


—Kazim Ali

.

un-heard of thing

.

That morning I heard water being poured into a teapot.

The sound was an ordinary, daily, cluffy sound.

But all at once, I knew you loved me.

An unheard-of thing, love audible in water falling. 

—Robert Bly

 .

in a drop of water

.

some(where

.

Somewhere on the road that crosses the spinster river a pilgrim approaches, praying to be the river, the sun, his walking, his barrenness or his thirst.

At dusk he finds the new moon by noticing a circular absence of stars, 

and the river bears children all night long.

—Kazim Ali

.