D.R.'S SPOON

medusa's kitchen .com

published a photo of mine and a poem on Sunday. I'll post the poem here but the blog itself is most excellent.

This poem was published as a small, but lovely broadside booklet containing only this poem by 12 Gauge Press in 2003 as 12 Gauge Press Flyer #17

WATER TALK

We could never understand

The meaning of the sounds

We heard when the ice broke

Up on the lake. Groans and squeaks,

Great moaning and screeching, deep

Rumbles and a gnashing that bled

Into our nerves, lighting up synapses.

Recently, we have come to believe

That water carries the voices of all things.

Those who have no body or are unwilling

To find one, those who are changing from

One place or manifestation to another.

We are mostly water. All of life is

Mostly water. It occurs to us that

Ice may contain as many voices as

The crashing of waves or the falling

Rain, great waterfalls, hail, sleet, soft

Snow and the breaking up of winter

Beneath our feet as we walk the woods.

Certainly there is language in pools,

Fountains with their entertainment,

A rushing of rapids, the sounds of newborns

In rivulets, brooks and vernal streams

Down hillsides. Secret drippings in caves

Have much to disclose as does window

Glass, stopping all kinds of water against

Its water-like self, amplifying and making

Rhythmic so much of water. The freshlet,

The rumblings of arroyos deep in desert,

The calving of icebergs, the melt before

Volcanoes, even burst pipes spraying

The air with water. All these things

May be voices, trying to convey to us,

The living, what it is to be such a great

Part of water as we are conscious beings.

Still we never could understand any

Such activity as having meaning. We

Must change it in some way. We press

To explain things to one another as if we

May know. Language is as liquid to us all.

___________________