I gathered the silence like tulips–like two lips–from the orchard. I gathered the silence and placed it on a weathered table in the weighted stillness of, “You can be free in this moment…if that is what you choose.” It was like a swollen place, those words, engulfing me, surrounding me. Pulled from my chest, from between and beneath my breasts, in waves like neap tides uncovering what sleeps beneath these bones made of skin.
Flesh turned promise. And I was reminded of so long ago when I spoke of time on a pendulum, swinging back and forth, before a sacrificial pyre. Where time was not a moment but all of life. Elongation of a second, a millisecond, into eternity. And how long ago was I sitting on that front porch with my feet on the rails, pen in hand, while I built rhythm on top of sound?
And distance marks journey…flesh, thought. A million little whispers and still I’m singing a song. “Wade through the water. Wade through the water, children. Wade through the water. God’s gonna trouble the water.” And it comes from deep within my chest. Way down, I think all the way from my soul. I don’t recognize my own voice when I sing that song. ”And I looked and saw a man on the Canaan side. He was making my dying bed. Come on and children wade…” And I do wade. Every waking day I wade, I swim, I tread, I drink. Because that is what I wish to do. I don’t skim the surface making footprints upon it. I don’t walk on water because I have no desire to.
So, I said back to my flayed and gaping chest emitting such light, “How do you free that which was never bound?”
(February 5, 2008)
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