Float

My body stretched out like a crucifix over Lake Michigan. The core of me was both warmed by northern sun and chilled by the glacial up-welling of deep waters. A sea plane dropped low, tilted its wings, and everyone bobbing and bathing reached their arms up high to wave. My toes could tickle the sandy bottom if I wanted. I am undisturbed. There is nothing to become or calculate or understand. To lose one's bearings is to begin again. Become nameless with me; grasp less; float.

Of what use are urges? I wake early in a slumping summer fog. After too long without rain, the night unfastened and poured itself hard unto even harder land. Cardinals syncopate between Blue Jay screeches. What makes these redbirds holier than others? A dissolution makes way, changing the relationship. With each rising, a gap lengthens between the naming and the nothing. It seems immature to sublimate it all now. Maybe the center is no longer thought or feeling; maybe it is no longer me.

Mums are being sold at the local grocery store. Summer bends the knee. Before August even ignites, September bears down. Daughters go back to college and sons stay up past 3 a.m. tangled in a net of anxiety. College visits, senior pictures, careening expectations. Dawn comes more slowly now; charcoal at 6 a.m.

Krishnamurti says, “Only when the breezes stop does the lake become quiet. You cannot make the lake quiet. Our job is not to pursue the unknowable but to understand the confusion , the turmoil, the misery, in ourselves; and then that thing darkly comes into being, in which there is joy.”

One doesn't have to search for the light or flee the darkness or study any particular thing. Remove the barriers and perhaps, float awhile. Are we not together?