Water into Water

Rain rolls through dawn without sparing a single sanctuary. Raindrops splash up from the deck like a hundred frogs startled into the pond. My eye follows the wooden path from deck to gazebo. Vines and weeds have found their way in between the planks, and a large oak branch has fallen – too heavy with rot and water to hold up the sky any longer. Those lofty seams find a way to speak, even when they come apart.

Yesterday a large woodchuck popped up from under the deck and rested his face on the edge. We stared at each for a bit before the dog got wind of the intruder. The woodchuck lives here now but it will not be easy keeping it safe.

Everything is water-shaped lately. My mind slides without resistance from here and not here – an open door to the rain. During the day this means a certain type of floating from frame to frame. At night, it's an unmoored drift from old letters to walks in the woods and back to light touches under white sheets in the dark.

Cardinal visits are abundant now. Hardly anything directs my attention more.

Red birds / red wine / red handed.

I'm surprised by what comes when looking the other way, like when the lake turns silver, deep with night. Throw a stone out into the black waters and see how memory cannot hold beauty and love. But I do remember when I felt love and beauty. I remember how it was alive and real and fresh – unobtainable and unconventional. I remember abandoning the old in an instant in order to open fully to the new. Moment to moment presence.

Yet there is no way to hold love there. Love unexpectedly curls its fingers on our shoulders from behind and pulls us back, turns us around and draws us into itself. In one moment, the narrow path loses all borders and we become water into water. That is the love of now. I do not wait for or conjure it. I do not call it home. I just speak of water and rivers and lakes and never ending rain to say that I am grateful for this watery love I cannot stop or start.