Like Water
With water the molecules add up,
and all that adding up gets heavy,
with that weight you must carry.
though, in the end, it's just water.
"Good job," the poem said sardonically.
"You've managed to make a depressing thing out of the Earth's most abundant joy," the poem added.
"I've just started, and while you may be right for the moment, it won't stay that way," I responded to the poem. Though I responded there continued to a doubt as to the real purpose of my making the water so heavy. I explained further. "There's water in blood and that is moving throughout the body always," I told the poem further, feeling more confident now that I managed an answer with some promise.
"How much of this poem will be about blood?", the poem asked.
"I'd say about eight percent because that's what's left after the water is removed from the blood," I said feeling pleased with the science and metaphor.
"Continue then and see," said the poem, "but even a poem doesn't truly enjoy all that blood you people like to call forth for it's metaphors all the time."
"I admit it, but again the poem won't really be about blood," I said to the poem. "It will be about water." Though after I spoke it I realized that perhaps I should keep this to myself. There are always privacies which should not be spoken, even to the poem. The form itself takes shape and its meanings often should remain hidden from plain sight and especially from dialog in the poem.
"A poem that's ninety two percent water is enough to drown a person," said the poem. "The reader may not like this, to have such dangers after the blood has already been introduced," the poem added wryly.
"People like all kinds of waters," I began to instruct the poem.
"It's your poem," said the poem.
"Let's craft it then," I answered revealing some emotion and distrust. The poem was too present, too pushy, I thought, so I backed off the page, wrote lightly with pencil hoping this light touch would lull it to quiet and allow me to get on with the business of writing the poem. To allow us both some space and to satisfy each what the other desired. I wanted it to go well for all three us; the poem, the reader and me.
"Somewhere over the rainbow," the poem added recognizing the allusion.
"Yes, that's there," I said, "but you don't have to speak it, it's there in the lines between."
"For the poem, there are no lines between, just what's on the page, the rest belongs to the reader."
"I envy you," I said to the poem. "You remain even when the reader departs." "You have form and substance even after the writer departs and the reader forgets."
"Perhaps you should use the camera then?" said the poem. "Perhaps it is more of a picture. Or maybe you should draw the scene and though I won't be there, the lines will be. The meaning deserves its own life, its own chance to live without these words."
"Perhaps" I said, feeling pleased the poem could recognize this and offer it, hoping it would not detect this pleasure and challenge it.
The poem remained quiet and my pencil continued lightly over the pages.
I had a body and inside that body moved water carrying all the components to keep it fed, protected, alive, functioning. The poem had this also but instead of water now was made of the pulp of trees and light graphite and the distance, like veins and arteries over the two dimensions, and ever so thin the third eye in relief, however slight upon the page in the pencils depressions, and the times in which you, dear reader, exchanged for its value, calculated somewhere in that time.
I hope it's enough to conjure a desirable body and that this body now formed could attract and sustain some beauty, and more meaning with the passing of time. Maybe even timeless.
"Timeless now?" said the poem suppressing a laugh, sensing I had drifted into the sentimental.
"You're right," I conceded to the poem. "I should be concerned with forming your body, like we spoke about before."
"Continue on," the poem replied, pleased with this turn.
"We are formed in the image of God," I instructed the poem.
"You mean you are," said the poem. "I'm formed from the ideas of people and my body will be a different kind than yours."
"In the beginning was the word," I quoted the Gospel of John. "You see, the word proceeded the body," I continued, "so you are like us, preceding all bodies. You are built on first principles which is why I think people love poetry so much. We are bound to it," I said feeling the spirit. "I can demonstrate," I said inviting the poems' continuance.
"Proceed" said the poem with a modicum of reluctance.
"Imagine a small figure sitting in front of you now. It rises from the table, a small human form, made from clay, looking at you. You make eye contact and watch as it blinks. Still looking at you it tries to form some words but halts and waits for yours first in anticipation. 'Name it' you hear a voice in your head as a directive. There's a bond between you as you seek for its name and help form its personality." "There it is," I said to the poem. "Like you it came from somewhere inside me. I made a new life even if only in the minds of we three for now, this new life exists," I said to the poem.
The poem stayed silent for a time. "That's for the reader," said the poem.
"Yes, I think," I replied. "It's your body that's the vehicle. You are formed in the same way." Once I said this to the poem I felt lost in my own romanticism.
The poem began to speak but stopped itself before a word could be uttered and we both took to silence.
"The figure waits for a name," I said after a time. "It's there in the abstract. It remains there between you, the reader, and me," I said after the silence, repeating my claim.
By this time the sun had set and the late summer was also silent in the time before the night insects start their symphony. The sky glowed dim from a crescent moon until a jet passed overhead, breaking the silence, on its way to Newark.
"Maybe the next one will be about silence," I said to the poem. The poem is never silent, I thought, feeling forlorn. "We'll talk again," I said to the silent poem. I'll release this poem now, I thought, feeling it as complete as it could get.
"Don't release it," the poem spoke confidently, breaking its silence.
"Why?", I responded with immediacy.
"Because there is nothing to love here."
You're right, I thought, feeling diminished. "How should this love be introduced and formed?" I said to the poem.
"That would be your main job in writing the poem," the poem responded again with confidence.
"And if you don't feel the love, or it is repressed?", I responded looking for guidance.
"I can not build the poem for you," said the poem, "though I may be able to offer some direction." "Things of clay are for you and your God, your scriptures."
"Then what kind of teacher can you be?", I implored the poem.
"Nothing if not some guide toward love," responded the poem.
I felt the need to cry and the poem could sense this.
"Why are you crying now?", said the poem.
"Because you exposed that thing, that weakness in me," I replied hoping this honesty would correct the path of the poem, introduce vulnerability and illicit some love.
"We will not love from vulnerability," said the poem cutting quickly to the meaning. "Do you understand?", said the poem, now instructing.
"I think so," I responded despondently but in truth I didn't. Sensing this, the poem went on.
"The reader and I want something that transcends the page. Love is the more prescient and present thing that will do so," the poem instructed further. "That's the timeless element," it added, now fully instructing me.
"How to add that now to the poem after all that introduction and the story about the body. All that wisdom and instruction could be lost to sentiment and then the whole of the poem will be lost, even that which I managed already," I spoke back to the poem to the quick.
"What's the purpose of my body and your creation, that small figure awaiting a name, if just a lesson to some illusion you conjured for the sake of a poem without feeling, or worse, without love," said the poem.
The poem was right and I felt a twinge of embarrassment to be exposed, so too the reader, who I was now convinced was waiting for love. "How do we lose ourselves?", I said to the poem. "I imagine us together in this despite my lectures," I added.
"I have my body now," said the poem confidently.
"What can this poem know of love?" I appeal to you reader, feeling the exposure would turn the dialog and unseat the poem from its dominance, to rebalance the poem.
"The reader is some future event," the poem said calmly. "The reader is not here now but will be only after you let go."
I read back through the poem's words again looking for some repose but couldn't find any. I remained silent, feeling naked now.
"You don't control your own nakedness," the poem added for completion.
Expose the nakedness of your father, I thought. There will be some instruction but the poem will see right through this, the reader even easier, so I remained silent.
"Poems don't develop in silence," said the poem after a time.
"I don't have love to add here," I barked back, feeling defeated.
"Then maybe this poem doesn't dare to that end," said the poem.
"Many don't," I replied. I thought perhaps not but now, in this nakedness, there could be no hiding it. "It's in the water," I conjured from memory in an attempt to realign the poem, to its central theme, water. "Love could be in the water."
"The water or the blood," the poem replied.
"Both," I said, hoping to end the exposure and vulnerability.
"We can agree then to allow it to be both," replied the poem. "It won't have won hearts but your self will have been revealed and I will remain embodied. From here we may have a future," said the poem.
"The reader now expects love," I replied.
"Then add it," said the poem.
"Crescent moon shine from the dry dark heavens upon the waters of our hearts' desires," I called forth in vein as a prayer in a stanza, to harken back to the language and rhythm of what the poem could be.
"This will have to do," said the poem. "These are not the greatest words spoken and the poem is equal to it but will do it," said the poem.
"We have the water, our theme, the allusions from blood, our discussion of love, and now the crescent moon," I mustered in response. "And you now have your body," I said to the poem.
"What's my body for?" the poem asked after a time.
"For exploring the body of other things," I answered, knowing this is as far as we would go here.
I was silent.
The poem was silent.
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