Upon our grand carousel, we ride the mounted months around the year until it’s Christmas once again.
Hope is the only ticket you need, and the music is free.
Look for me on the one-eyed Palomino. Wave and I’ll wave back.
May your Christmas merry go round and round the next New Year!
It happened in August. I knew better than to wade into the water, but I’m compulsive that way.
The water seemed calm enough, barely a ripple on its surface. Maybe it was the shattered sunlight, winking and blinking like a thousand sequins, that drew me farther in. My feet followed the slope of the earth until I stood in chest-high water.
That’s when I saw the wave out on the horizon. I always think it is a small wave brought by some unseen current, a wave that will wash over me gently, but not pull me under.
So, I stood there and waited.
I should have known, and if I’m honest, I did know, but I have a chronic case of optimism that affects my vision. I’m so nearsighted that I cannot recognize reality until it’s right in front of me.
When it was too late to turn back, I saw what lay beneath that wave: the great whale. And it swallowed me, as it has done year after year.
For four and a half months I traversed the ocean in the belly of that whale, my old companion. Then last week, he spit me out, worn and wasted, my eyes unused to the light. For two days I lay on the beach, asking myself if I would return to the beach or move inland.
Next time it will be different, I tell myself. Teaching will not swallow me whole; I will teach and have a life. Sitting by the fire here on the shore, watching the small waves roll in, I believe that.
Next time it will be different. In January I will return to the shore, believing, always believing.
I am called to the sea. I cannot stay away.
Photos: Seashore Whale
No other lover has been so faithful as you, who wait for me at day’s end, unmoved by my failures and lack of grace, ready to bear me up without complaint and hold me in your embrace through every dark hour.
Magician of the night, I give you weariness and you transform it into rest. I drink the great elixir you prepare for me and awake refreshed in body and soul.
You are the skiff I row to carry me from past to future across the Sea of Dreams, where I have drowned a thousand times.
Atop your still rink, I glide and spin through the dark hours. When the ice melts, I fall beneath the depths, swim the length of night, and crawl to shore.
You are the dance floor of my memories.
Each night I meet monsters, lovers, and my other selves, reincarnated from remembrances past. We play upon your darkened stage – dramas, comedies, and mysteries – to our forgetful audience.
You are the envelope I fold myself in to mail myself to tomorrow.
I plant the seed of me in your rich soil, grow new again, reborn each day older than the day before.
You are the cocoon I wrap myself in to shed my younger selves, all the people I used to be.
I am sovereign of your continent, where I rule over a legion of dreams.
You are the sheet of paper on which I write stories of love and loss, tales too sad to tell or remember.
Unafraid I climb onto the ledge of night and jump. Then I wind myself in the shroud of yesterday’s me and die once more, until I can die no more.
Photos: skiff by phil smith skater cocoon
year-struck 