SHE OWNED THE WORLD

Strong, straight-limbed, and confident.
Water was her element,
her comfort,
her first love, her last love and all those in between.
She was born floating in soft scented pools of light.
Lilac caressed her every move.
She was born pronoic, thinking all hands were there to help,
all eyes there to see for her.
For she was blind and lived through her other senses,
only perceiving shades of dark and light.

This never troubled her, for she couldn't say what she was missing.
she couldn't see.
She spent all her early years swimming in lilac pools
with frilly, friendly goldfish.
She came to know every rock and sandy verge.
Every cove and warm current.
Every bit of bank and reed.
As loved as her vast string of pools were to her
she became restless,
longing for more.
Some unknown something.
Then she began to hear tales of the wild waterways
and untamed seas.

The dangers of the deep.

Being blind she couldn't imagine the run
of rapid waters,
the ridges,
the rocky, sandless banks,
as they lowered her into
the scentless, frigid flow.
How could she calculate without sight?
For the first time she wished for the ability to deep see.
But there would be sighted helpers all along the way.
Wouldn't there?
She felt confidence going in.
Then the current caught her.

Fast.
So fast...
So this is wild, she thought,
and was swept out,
away from anything
familiar.

Past hearing the song of the goldfish.
Past the soft touch of lazy lilac sands, and helping hands.
She had thought she owned the world.
But this...
This was all unknown, fear filled and painful.
Banging, swirling against the jagged buffeting sandless banks.
Hope of knowing this wild water course dashed
upon cold stone.
How could they have let her in?

She owned the world.
She had insisted.

Now she understood what a child she was in her knowledge,
her understanding.
They had tried to tell her she might not be ready.
That she might be overconfident.
But she would not hear it in her joy of new explorations to come.
Now, in the tumble of rapids,
she bumped into
many silver flashes of large fish.
Only shadows of light compared to the lilac pools and the goldfish.
"Help me!" she bubbled, "Help me find a safe shore."
The Salmon replied with one voice,
"Oh, we are sorry, we cannot stop now.
We must renew ourselves in egg and sperm.
When we are new, we will come to you then,
we will find you in the wide sea."
Then they were gone and she was swept
down the rocky gullet of the screaming river.
Swallowed like a precious seed
to lodge in the heart of rage.

Long sinuous shapes
brushed against her, terrifying in their darkness.
How could the water which had held her gently as any beloved
bear her down to the rocky bottom?
Where were her sighted friends?
She sensed them not at all.

She was alone.
Undone.
Unmade.
A single tear in dark danger.

She was brittle with fear.
Pummeled from every side.
Rock, churning water, shadowed shapes.

Time stood still, or went fast.
A year and a day.
A million.

Lost.

She let go.

What good was fear?
It did not serve.
It didn't change things,
except to make them worse.

She let go.

Relaxed into the wild surge,
began to ride an exotic lullaby,
until she was exhausted with new experience.
She slept.

When she awoke
she was being rocked in a vast, gentle deep,
Back and forth,
back and forth.
A familiar rhythm.
Safe in the arms of the Beloved,
at the bottom of the wild sea.
Phosphorescent glimmer tickled the backs of her unused eyes.
Salt.
Sea sting.
There from the comfort of the salty womb
sight was born.
Color, ripping her out into a new world.

Bright, neon fish,
green life
and blue.
White light from creatures lit up like underwater suns.
Orange crabs, red, yellow, purple.
Nuzzling sea cows and singing whales,
dolphin and seals, gamboling in happy play.
Swordfish, tiger sharks, narwhals, and chubs.
Names and colors of things
flowed like the rapids into her.

Then the silver glisten of new salmon
undulated around her.

Wisdom... cradled her in new knowing.

She, owned the world.

(c) 6.2.99

created from a water dream