The site went down yesterday for the first time ever due to a fluke, so I make a peace offering with this poem I wrote last year and a brief introduction about it.

I have always felt a rather deep, truly divine connection to water. Even that feels an understatement – it’s more accurate to say, perhaps, that I feel that I truly am the element of water. It is not my zodiac element, nor do I believe it to be my Chinese element, nor is my element according to any other system except my life. That’s enough for me. I feel it, I hear it, my most prophetic dreams are written in it, I am it. For this reason, water is one of the few elements I have not looked into too widely to see what others put symbolism to, beyond what I’ve come across unintentionally in literature and, intentionally, nature. I wanted to explore its ins and outs all my own.

Water is a powerful element, one of the most powerful, one of grace, life-giving, all-encompassing, adaptable, something that can run fast and rest in silent serenity, something that chatters and something that ebbs away tepidly, something that kisses and drowns, gives life and may wipe it out, freezes hard and swells with foggy haze or crystal clarity, something that warms and reflects, has depths sometimes that go beyond what meets the eye and sharply surprising shallow areas where one may cross with little risk, loves the rockiest shorelines in full force, recedes with smoothly healed sands in its wake.

I feel all of this and so much more. I find my tranquility in waters, I feel its sound in my chest, be it rushing from the containment of a faucet in droplet force, pounding upon my window with insistence to touch my soul, or sighing its sweetest lullaby on a shore not too far away (the deepest excitement).

This then is something I wrote as much an incomplete attempt at self-portraiture as reverie for my home, the sweet element that will someday sweep me away and untie my fibers from the knots of humanity and hug me back into the energy of this earth…

I am the water

I am the water
Running from mountaintops to carve valleys in your heart
immersed with ambition to change oceans
Originating from rocky-peaked challenges
I melted my cold heart to move parallel with my dreams and loves
giving myself freely to the all those whose paths I cross
bubbling with the chatter of spring
swimming with life

I am the water
freefalling from the sky
arms spread wide, fearless of the moment
dancing across your visions on an empty window
relieving the heat of the day with gentle kisses on your face
spinning playfully and changing direction on the wind
softening ink from the news into blurred out concerns
delivering myself unexpectedly

I am the water
ferocious and unstopping
leaping in white crests the backs of boulders with haphazard grace
carrying with ease the cargo of the careless and carefree alike, unburdened
impulsively bending and turning, winding adaptable in my course to embrace what life brings next
diving headfirst to unknown adventures
rapid and boldly ever-reaching
pulling you in

I am the water
lying still in perfect reflection
shining light I am given back into the world around me
in spite of murky depths far below the surface of serenity
gazing into the world just as she gazes into me, camera obscura
those that come close enough will find themselves noted in me
different from every perspective, I offer what you are willing to see
deep in thought

I am the water…