October #11

I strip off my clothes and dive in to the subnormal pond,
shivering and freezing in the water, my mother, my maker,
and swim. There are fantastic fish here,
huge and gold and whiskered,
and though the water is murky the lower I sink,
they shine all the while, a beckon or beacon of other things.
There is no bottom here, only a darker, muddy, dirtiness,
near which blind white mountain cave fish murmur,
sickeningly grotesque, pallid shapes that come too close
but do no harm.
Is there harm here? There must be, but not in the depths.
The warning comes treading water in the middle,
unsupported - insupportable, unpardonable, ready for the snatching.
Come take me! Here I am, weak and lonely, too far to
speed to shore and pull myself up. Too far.
Too far.

March #13

It's funny how wind
rippling in hanging leaves
sounds like rushing water.

March #12

The truth isn't always easy.
Sometimes it comes bursting,
like a mountain spring,
ready to jump raging to the forefront
and be the focus, the base,
of life...
yet those mountain springs can turn into raging rapids
and sweep away all in their path
in floods that drown relationships,
people, feelings, sensibility.

The truth can be hard to find.
In a desert the secrets of feeling
lie hidden beneath piles of continually shifting
death-dry sands.
The desert can still provide life
and not all is lost
when truth is hidden.
But the real bloom comes after the sudden rain
when even the cacti spring
into real life,
not the guarded existence they knew before.

Truth is not easy.
Sometimes it is hard as hail,
or suppressing, in whiteout blizzards.
Truth is not kind.
It has no emotion,
it is what it is,
a force
that can guide, change,
reveal or cover,
sustain or drown.

Truth does not care.
But the need for it
is undeniable.