A Remembrance of Water

Once I reflected the sky

I was everywhere. 

The silver shoots of fish ran 

through me. I bore the weight

of great sharks, the shiver 

hinting light of minnows

and the whales, ah the whales

parted me with their stories.

Then, little by little, earth

encroached. I rose into air. 

Currents folded into me 

tides pulled my center deeper. 

The horizon’s line once so distant

defined. Wave after wave washed

the rocks leaving rivulets

of sweetness. I was sundered 

into strands named ocean 

and sea, named river and lake

named pond and stream.

Driven below I lay beneath 

sand and stone. I hid in the hidden 

places buried deep and deeper

not stone but stone holding me. 

Still, the remembrance of water 

remained, the time when nothing could 

hold me but the sweetness of your lips

seeking me to quench your desire. 

You are suspended in me. I am

suspended in you. Sing me out 

from the hidden places and I will 

return. I will be beyond melody 

I will let you drink me. We will rise.

Miriam’s Well

Tenderly she lowered him into the water amongst the weeds, wound in the safety of reeds. She waited and watched until he was found. Then she ran to find Jochebed and bring her to Bilhah. Their mother became Moses’ nurse. He grew to a man and when the time came Miriam helped him gather the people and ready them. They fled, walking into the desert with their unleavened bread, goats, and sheep. The few things they could carry. When they came against the Red Sea, it parted with their plea. She stood in that wake.  Once on the other side, the waters closed, the path covered, she sang. She led the women in praise and dance. Miriam carried the melody. 

That’s when it began. The sweet water streamed beneath her as she walked, below the ground where no one could see. When she stopped, the source would rise to the surface, becoming a well to douse their thirst.  It followed her for all the years. When she died the water disappeared. Ran so far underground it could not be drawn with song or dance or beseeching tears. Moses implored, but not trusting his words he raised the rod. Aggrieved and grieving, he struck the rock.

Water came but the song was lost. Their thirst was slaked but now walking their hearts ached. It was Miriam who risked delight. Her voice so sonorous and sweet hues of colors appeared in the light. She never reached home, but home followed her, underground, underneath, just beneath her step.

Home

I found home where I wasn’t looking. At the end of a path along a ravine filled with trees, surrounded by woods, field grasses give way to a clearing. There the underground spring rises and becomes a pond. In its waters dawn and dusk, quavering leaves, the cast of clouds reflected. First children, then grandchildren cast pebbles from its small shore. Who can count what lies beneath? The whispers of our years living here, this place, this home.

I cannot name the trees

nor the birdsong that wakes me

yet this land claims me.

Miriam’s Timbrel

She brought the water with her. A song of steps crossing the desert, quenching thirst. At first, they counted the stars believing the shifting arcs of light to be a map, another gift to show the way. When they stopped just past the onset of dusk, the ground began its gurgling beneath them. At night near the well they sang praises. The first died and the first was born, the days turned to months and the months to years, and still they walked. Only they forgot to look up, forgot to listen, forgot to sing. Still the water was with them, as long as Miriam kept the song.

Miriam’s song beckoned 

the water. Timbrel unstilled 

still chimes, wind rippling. 

Jochebed entered the promised land 

I left the children, those I gave birth to 

and those I helped to birth. I crossed 

the desert, the losses and the gifts 

stitched into me. At times I thought 

they had forgotten my name 

though I had more than one

though I was one of the only ones

to cross into promise. When Miriam

my only daughter died I was there. 

I held her mouth next to my mouth

our breaths intertwined. She gave 

me the song that once I had passed 

to her, the melody like a rock loosening 

to the rain, the one with notes 

bright as thirst quenched.

I went to my despairing sons 

saying you have only 

to call to her, the well 

will open. Drowned in grief 

they could not listen.

Stone was all they could see 

anger spiraling its ridges. 

But for me her voice was clear 

and rising – vapor, cloud, water.

.  

Miriam has many names

Just a girl, I give my brother to the river, trusting water, trusting reeds

the basket weaves around him. Grasses waver, rock him in the river.

I wonder what memory he holds of that time afloat if he felt me watching

humming a melody of water just below the thrush’s song, currents of river.

These many years later water flowers over rocks, blossoms light like scent

I lift into sky, weightless as a note, wind swirling dust, whispers vanish 

the river disappears.  I am no longer of this world, water turns to stone

I turn to water, leaving a path for the ones left behind to find.

The pond cradles the moon

There are nights when the pond holds the moon the way a mother holds an almost sleeping child. Still but not quiet. Rocking, shushing, humming. Light wavers in the water, clouds pass across the sky. The tree branches reach but don’t quite touch. Listen, and the breezes hush. Darkness becomes bolder, as does the cold in the change of seasons. The last leaves sing like windchimes, a jangle of tambourine. The sky is a tallit covering the world. 

Moon sleeps on the pond

glow emanates from below

in water light becomes air.

This Summer After

The pond changes with the time of day, the cast of sky, the seasons. Even then it’s as if it had its own source of light beneath the water and the muck, beneath the swarms of minnows, the flat undersides of snapping turtles, the quick dart of frogs. 

Circling above the surface, to claim their spot, dining needles and dragonflies are glints of light. Further up, past the treetops, vultures, and an occasional hawk, ride currents of air. Once in a great while a great blue heron lands and holds the little shore.

I always imagined I’d live by the sea, alongside the constant breath of tides. The swish of waves in calm weather, the pounding surf on rougher days. Instead, I am landlocked. This last year bound close to home, and with a new dog, I walked the shoreline of the little pond, the perimeter of the field, the hill of the driveway. I walked the same steps again and again, each time it was different.

The tone of light, the shift of birdsong, the glimmer of spiderwebs in the grass. The changing green of the leaves. The dandelions giving way to daisies and Queen Anne’s lace, tangled brambles holding berries as they ripen from hard bright red to a deep purple blue black.

The same is not the same. The familiar is only so when you stop looking. At the pond there is the suddenness of tadpoles, the luminescent blue green of frog eggs. In the fields the rise and fall of a seventeen-year cicada symphony, like the sea edging its shore.

In this inland place the karst landscape beneath the deer paths causes the land to dip and rise. The sky is rarely still, it fills with imprints of weather from the gulf in the nearer south, to the great arctic systems of the far north. There is always something changing.

The pretty quietness is deceptive. Sudden thunder trembles everything and the wind rises bending the trees, rippling the pond, and clanging into downpour. And too, there is a great fault line not far away at all. This land was once the sea, was once at glacier’s edge. Stillness only seems still.

At the center

Water rests here, even as it flows beneath the surface even as it enters and leaves, you cannot see it. Sometimes, perhaps at the full moon the light silvered and almost bright, perhaps at sunrise, when the glimmers of rose and gold wash the surface, Miriam rises for a moment where air meets the lilt of a song. A slight tilt of wind steals the whole world away. In the midst of day all we hold is weightless. All is movement even as all is still. 

Hallowed is the pond

luminous echo glimmers

at its center, everything.

Tashlich

It is the very first day of summer that is the longest day of the year. As we move into the real height of the season, past mid-July and into August, the days grow shorter. This second pandemic year we are out and about more each week and yet I think it is only a reprieve. There is still so much we do not know, so much of what we were once sure of is changing. We can’t return to the same place in that other time, and we are never quite the same ourselves.

Yet each year the same cycle of days, these weeks meant for reflection, ready us for the days of awe to come. For years we stood at the pond’s little shore and emptied our pockets of breadcrumbs and dust to let loose the old. But the fish ate the crumbs and swam deeper into the water. Other years we tossed stones, each one a memory or a deed we wanted rid of, but they sank into the mud after the circles of ripples disappeared. 

Then we created our own ritual in the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We sat by the edge of the water and wrote what we wanted to let loose. Then we tore each paper and burnt it, scattered the ashes into the pond. We turned it into air and water, fire, and earth, freeing us to begin another year.

The pond that lies at the center of our land 

fed by a creek that runs underground

making its way between layers of rock

this small body of water, my wellspring. 

We are but drops of water 

We don’t know if the droplets of music became water 

or the droplets of water music. We will not know 

if the tune was carried on the wind or if it created the wind 

if the melody was the colors in the sky at dawn 

or if dawn gave the melody colors. We will not know 

what came first or second or third and we won’t know 

what comes last. We can only stand here, in this between 

listening to the sky, the ground, the song that surrounds.