The Deep

Diving down below the still riffled waters,

The rocks covered over with weed

Their beastliness fading to a dull simplicity

And the fears receding again.

It's just rocks here below, they are safe

Here below, and so I descend

Relaxed, the cool flushing my spirit

The soft current fading away.

I pull deeper, and am suddenly in cold

And icy cold depth surrounding me still

The rocks new slithering beneath my fingers

And moving as a vast new world.

It is alive, here in the deep, and it writhes

A pain the wants desperately to rise

Yet frozen out all those year, sunk beneath

The surface and the breeze and the safety.

It now wraps around me, the cold and the beast

It coils and it presses me tight

Willing me to look at it close and look hard

And I do, a desperate and afraid instinct.

I look into its face, and it looks at me

A face that I'll never confuse nor forget

For it is me, in power, my eye ablaze,

Unforgiving, questioning, beckoning me still.

The beast that is me 'neath the dark and cold waters

Wants my attention, holds me fest in its grasp

I listen as it talks, as it enfolds me at last

Release my surface breath and inhale of the deep.

Drowned here, held tight in the rocks,

Gaze pierced by the fiercely questioning glare

I am forged anew, am let onto the vista

The vast expanse of the world of living.

A let loose, my commandment rasping my throad

Ringing my ears, bending the sheaves before me

LIVE, and be grand and of service, will death

Will life, give yourself in the only way you can.

And the breeze and the riffles and the gentle murmur

Was never the same after that day

When, held fast in my rocks of the deep

I was reborn into my truest life.