My body of water
makes waves.
It knows calm
does not equal peace
and sometimes it must
rise and surge
in order to be heard.
I am a storm.
I accept
I will disturb
more than a few boats.

My body is a waterfall
here to accompany you
as life takes you down,
hard and magnificent,
then gentles
into the pool of your
broken heart.
I am witness.
I am the beloved’s
arms.

Soul set in motion,
I dive into waters
larger than myself.
I too learn to swim.

My streams tumble
from sky-peak
Himalayan mountains,
release laughter from sunlight,
pull color from pebbles,
urgent and excited
with life’s descent,
with the unstoppable
momentum
of my surrender.

I am being danced.

This surprise
like the first cold day
scatters a splash
of concern.

Desire floods
the basement
of my mind.

My mind, liquid,
gets ahead of itself.

My water ripples
out to your water.
Sifts through your conflicts
and your conversations.

I rush over
the stones,
quicken to their
wanting:

Turn me to sand
with my thousand
mistakes.

I call my tide
back to this belly,
this voice, this breath,
on earth, where
I am most afraid.

Prescience is a gift
but presence
is the prayer that lands
in the center of my body
as a drop from the sky.

My river spirals and curls
and bends at last
to the wetlands, slows,
brushes through minerals
and grasses where the heron
stands unfazed, still,
winged, while I filter
what matters. This
takes time.

Purified, you can’t
contain this body.
It stretches across waves.
The rain that I am
opens flowers.
Within each petal
a verse.

I find my way into the mud
of springtime.
I kiss the bones
and the buried things.
I am fragrant and alive
in the weight
that shapes me.
Here in darkness I grow,
where water and land meet,
in the tangled
and complicated roots
of all life.