Vertigo
What is there to see?
The well is too deep.
When I turn the light
of my mind towards
the deepest feeling
of a long drop falling
then I only see myself
and the surface tension
of my dark reflection.
I am nothing
but the moon in a mirror
whispering silence
to an empty picture.
I am a well
but a terrible listener,
distorted echoes
rolling in the distance.
I am not ready
to listen too deeply.
The depths won’t call me.
They’re just waiting with me.
I’d rather break the surface
and delight in the chaos of
breaking waves and starlight,
captivated by disorientation
not confronted by reflection.
But unthinkable
and worse by far
is to even approach
imagining the moment
where I might stay so still
that I start to sink and see
that the mirror of the lake
of the water of the well
might also be a window
to a never-ending hell.
For everything is in there.
Everything is down there.
If I cut away judgment
and distraction and restraint,
if I lay down my thinking
and my strategies and wait,
then I find myself a newborn
floating in a vast, expansive space.
I am a river.
I am the water.
I am the very blood of nature.
It’s only when I play
at being the one
up there
looking down
on a well of life inside me
that I fear the drop
and can’t bear the thought
that everything is endless
and rootless and boundless,
that no amount of clinging
or reaching or hiding
will serve to do anything
to break the fall.
But I am the well
and the river
and the water.
And I go on forever
and there is nothing else
to fall for.
I see the mirror
and the window
and the moon
and the ripples
and the ocean
and the room.
And today the water rises
and today the water falls.
And I am flooded
I am washed out
I am drowning
I am worn away
I am carried by the current
I am broken by the wave.
And clearly
I am nothing
I am open
I am free.
And clearly
there is nothing
and there is nowhere
else to be.
Everything drops.
And life rises.
And I am moved.
