Heat: a plethora of drowsy and a dearth of sleep.
Where dreams can't form, there flourishes reverie. This I like about heat.
Despite our amateurish ventures into grooming, Dog is
heavy coated, and that is why we leave the steamy lanes for the cool and
wakeful woods. No grass scorch here, only the bone dry mysteries of some dead
branches amongst fountains of green leaf, the fresh arch of ground cover ferns.
Oh, look, an open gate: and that is why we edge the
waving crop field. Tall grasses keep our feet cool, the rest is hot idyll. In
the cattle field the beasts sprawl. We take the first descent to the river.
Things seem to spring to being, most dreamlike: the
trees, the gaping gate, the tree root steps down to the water. Unplanned and
obvious.
I think of last night, after work: we stopped on a
cliff top, watched the sun set into low cloud, the sea was gentle, it sounded
like breathing.
Tell me something I asked: and the
sea whispered: Mermaids exist. You are one. I had been too long
in the sun, I thought.
Here the sun refracts from dark surface. Unsighted
feet slide, where they touch the rock and riverweed. Where they don't touch,
arms slide out; limbs swim. Heart trembles. I love this: so what is it that I
fear? Unknown things: murky as this river.
Against such doubt is set shoals of tiny fish, a
dragonfly snapping gnats, acrobatic birds, the broad winged heron in flight,
the secret sculpture garden of uncovered tree roots, these stony shores only
visible at low water. I swim past the Oak Dragon: Dog swims right under its
tail: startles a duck family: her surprise swiftly channels to pursuit. I laugh
at the slaps of water on the rocks as she fails to swim faster than a startled
duck.
Underneath me bubbles pop, from a source unidentified.
On a submerged rock I sit, fully clothed.
I hadn't meant to be in the river, I am thinking,
casually poking at rock slime, watching the blips of fish.
If they are fish… and not river mermaids. They
exist. I am one.
Comments
When I was in high school, I wrote a poem in Spanish called, 'Hermanas del Elemento.' It was about two me's, or maybe about a true sister. One of us was on land and the other in the water. We were filled with yearning for the existence of the other.
Maybe you are my hermana del elemento.
I don't know if you are a mermaid but you are a spell-binder and how perfect that you use the word "reverie" (so lovely in itself) because that is often the state that I find myself in after having dipped in to the world of your writing.
Heather, I will NEVER get bored of reading your reaction- to create a reverie (gorgeous word, gorgeous concept) in another person is invigorating and humbling.
Feel like I just took a standing ovation AND won a prize!! Thank you both :-) xx