beings who walk other spheres

 

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The world below the brine,

Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,

Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick

tangle openings, and pink turf,

Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the

play of light through the water,

Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes,

and the aliment of the swimmers,

Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling

close to the bottom,

The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting

with his flukes,

The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy

sea-leopard, and the sting-ray,

Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths,

breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do,

The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed

by beings like us who walk this sphere,

The change onward from ours to that

of beings who walk other spheres.

—Walt Whitman

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the prayer of the little ducks

 

.

Dear God,
give us a flood of water.
 

Let it rain tomorrow and always.
 

Give us plenty of little slugs
and other luscious things to eat.
 

Protect all folk who quack
and everyone who knows how to swim.
 

Amen.

—Carmen De Gasztold

Prayers from the Ark trans. by R. Godden

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all things merge

 

 

 .

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. 

The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. 

On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. 

Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. 

I am haunted by waters.

—Norman Maclean

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subtle spirit

.

A field of water betrays a spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky. On land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of light. 

It is remarkable that we can look down on its surface. We shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it. 

—Henry David Thoreau 

Walden, the pond

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sweet mystery

 

 .

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery 
about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seems to speak 
of some hidden soul beneath; 

like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod 
over the buried Evangelist St. John. 

And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, 
wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters’ Fields of all four continents, 
the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; 

for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, 
drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; 

all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; 

tossing like slumberers in their beds; 

the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.

—Herman Melville 
Moby-Dick, 1851

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Warrior of Light

.

The Warrior of the Light sometimes behaves like water,

flowing around the obstacles he encounters.

Occasionally, resistance might mean destruction, and so

he adapts to the circumstances. 

He accepts, without complaint, that the stones in his path 

hinder his way through the mountains.

Therein lies the strength of water: It cannot be touched 

by a hammer or ripped to shreds by a knife. 

The strongest sword in the world cannot scar its surface.

The river adapts itself to whatever route proves possible,

but the river never forgets its one objective: the sea. 

So fragile at its source, it gradually gathers the strength of

the other rivers it encounters.

And, after a certain point, its power is absolute.

—Paulo Coelho

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living water

 

.

If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My litany would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

 

 —Philip Larkin

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