Here…these waters.
How did I end up here?
Off-shore, un-moored
and docks all far away
behind me in the mists
above me in the air
above the waters
I traverse?

And guppies become barracudas
goldfish become sharks,
how did that happen?
Something in the water?
Something that doesn’t belong?
I guess that would be me,
heavy metals and radioactives
tainting all I touch.

I was always chained to edges,
I was always tossed by tides,
back and forth
up the beach
and down to seas relentless,
in the running of the tides of time,
in the running from the tides of time.

But now I swim unmoored
in unfamiliar deeps
surrounded by voracious
cruel cold creatures sleek
and fit for fit survival
by merciless sharp teeth
and furious assaults
of shredding ruthless words

and I’ve no idea whatsoever
how leaving the docks
marooned me here unmoored in deeps
surrounded by cold sharks

**yes, I am cognizant of the litanies writ, spoke, imagined, nursed and harbored…I know the recitations red and rough, I have my own remembrance, written in blood and sweat and tears, and silent visits in the night to sweetly sleeping angels soft, and exhalations beautiful and smelling so of life…and hair, scented like bread fresh from some heavenly oven and broken for me and put in hair…pulling me thru the valley of death…

…and discovering that my grateful declarations were in fact resented and received as guilt trips laid, it crushes me to my core…and something is defeated there, something there has died, in my core…

this is the unmooring of which I speak, the unknowing in which I am marooned…

and worst of all is the finding of complete strangers in places I knew every inch and wrinkle, and it is this that unnerves the deepest, for now every word spoken, every question asked, every thing created, I have no idea if what I think about it is real, is actually real…my truth meter pegs and then it seems all others call that up “down”, that north “south”…

…and I send up SOS flares, ask trusted hearts to read and to consider offerings of soul and heart, attempts to understand…and silence towers, and life looms and busy threatens…

that is what this poem is about.  Swimming in strange waters in a strange land with strange sights and fearful creatures so hungry for my blood and so uncaring of the carcass left behind and so disinterested in the living heart that fiercely cries out “we are here we are here”, hoping Horton is out there, somewhere, a faithful elephant who never forgets…

Long ago the Psalmist asked “Whom have I but You?  Though the mountains fall into the sea, though the colored dawns turn to shades of grey, I am learning to see the beauty of the greys and the glories of the canyons whose majesty is manifested in the things that were removed…

I do have Father, and I do have my Good Shepherd and Great High Priest who passed thru the heavens themselves and not a veil of cloth and skins…and I do have Great Holy Spirit, whom my heart cries to again and again “Mama”, She of wisdom and tender mercy, She who was there at the Lord’s beginnings, She by whom all was made that the Lord made…

…I have Them, and being unmoored with Them is like taking my homeland with me regardless of where I roam**