gulping life

i daily greet the vein of water that lives nearby, my beloved
bayou. assessable & familiar yet with great mystery, unknown
contents & depths. she is like me. i come to her edge to welcome
the day, to thump the trees with a hello hand to the trunks, to listen
for the frequency that will guide from dreams to awake the way
between the two. i merge with the effortlessness of allowing
breath to flow, vision to open, body to express in movement.

every person is an ocean: a swell of motion gulping life
making contact/reflecting resultant waves, pulsations
cresting, falling, a moving integration of all that touches
us/all that we touch. a continuum of uniting.

what i love most about the sea is its yielding, an absolute
embodiment of surrender. water does not move itself
but shows movement, makes visible unseen forces that pull
and play upon the planet. it traces uneven earth beneath it,
the arc of arms paddling propeller-like, boat bottoms that cut
curly waves in sharp V's, fish that poke the surface & skydiving
pelicans that disturb the undulating rhythm, as the erratic patterns
radiate outward, folded back into the pulse of the water, dissolved
and restored to the colossal beat of the whole.

my little Buffalo Bayou flows as she does, and i am the ocean
next to her. we exchange in a language of no words our hearts
and hopes, moving downstream to our inevitable destinies.