Rain on water

All afternoon rain streams down on the lake
until a break in the black clouds
draws me out of the house
into the rocking waves.

I dive through layers of darkness, layers of light,
and when I come up for air,
the sky echoes the underwater world,
speaking the unspoken,

not a warning, or god-like, “It shall be!”—
more a wind-driven, earth-embracing, word—
and I swim to meet it,
from the lake into the sky.

Next to this the body is nothing,
and the mind less than the body,
and only the country of the heart
is equal to what I know.

“Rain on Water” was published in Swimming with a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle (Red Dragonfly Press, 2008).

Related Resources

• Swimming with a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle. By Freya Manfred. Red Dragonfly Press, 2008. (Amazon.com)