Be Water
I teach my sighs to lengthen into songs,
Yet, like a tree, endure the shift of things.
--Theodore Roethke
Look,
among things invisible
yet seen, water
is but one thing invisible,
but real,
taking the shape
of everything it touches:
cups and pools, barrels, throats,
fishbowls, seabeds....
Look,
you cannot imagine it,
even in sleep, when dreaming
gives a shape and color,
a weight to ghosts
that have not color nor shape
nor any measurable mass
but a mind gone wild.
Look,
can you imagine: what becomes
the field and the tree, yet is neither
field nor tree? What fills the pot
that boils the rice,
yet is neither pot nor grain
is a shape-shifter
that might as easily
itself, take on
the body of the cup,
the blood of the dreamer.
Look,
even science, in all its halls
and universities, measuring velocity,
weighing mass, discerning temperature
(all things as invisible themselves
but real as curiosity or love, as courage,
wind, or breath)
cannot tell how a thing invisible,
of no describable boundaries, remains
itself, unseen as a spirit
in a mirror, assuming the face
of everything.
About Me
- Joyce Ellen Davis
- 1. In dreams I am often young and thin with long blond hair. 2. In real life I am no longer young, or thin, or blonde. 3. My back hurts. 4. I hate to sleep alone. (Fortunately I don't have to!) 5. My great grandfather had 2 wives at once. 6. I wish I had more self-discipline. (I was once fired from a teaching position in a private school because they said I was "too unstructured and undisciplined." --Who, me??? Naaaahhh....) 7. I do not blame my parents for this. Once, at a parent-teacher conference, the teacher told me my little boy was "spacey." We ALL are, I told her. The whole fan damily is spacey. She thought I was kidding. I wasn't. 8. I used to travel with a theater reperatory company. My parents weren't happy about this. 9. My mother was afraid that I would run off and paint flowers on my cheeks and live in a commune, and grow vegetables. I once smoked pot. ONE TIME. 10. I don't drink or smoke. (Or swear, much. Well, I drink milk, and water, and orange juice, and stuff. Cocoa. I love Pepsi.) 11. Most of my friends are invisible. 12. I am a poet and a writer. All of my writing on these pages is copyrighted. Borrowing (without acknowledgment) is a sin.
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