On early summer days
My feet in ocean waters
Cramp
The cold sliding along nerve endings
So cold they burn hot.
The soles tightening
My toes curling
Until I must hop foot to foot
Bouncing to try to ease the pain.
It doesn’t work
And I am forced from the water
Feeling sheepish.
It is June, after all.
This is what we do-
we go to the ocean in summer to swim
But I can’t make it past my shins
Weak human that I am.
And now, in November
The heron that stalks the stream by my house
Stands, hunched,
crunched down on himself
Preserving warmth
on this below freezing day
But still in the water,
His feet still immersed
As the cold river slides past him.
Sometimes it strikes me as so peculiar
How humans see themselves
As better than the animals
More than the animals
When I feel so often
Less
When I feel so often
In awe of their abilities
Their specialties
Their secret ways of knowing the world
Their senses more then senses
And bodies more than bodies
Soft flesh that I am
And weak.
I can write poetry with words
And so I do
Although I long to sing poetry like the birds
Swim poetry like the whales
Soar poetry like the butterflies.
But
Being human I must just
Notice
Observe
Attend
To the superpowers of the world
And record them
In my words
As my own secret way of knowing.
