Rain on water

Rain on water

The sky echoes the underwater world.

Freya Manfred
Underwater - blue shining in deep of the sea - Stock image

© RomoloTavani/istock

© RomoloTavani/istock

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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).

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