Body of Water


My friend, an award winning writer,
Sits in a small boat in the Atlantic,
Watches her exquisite children enjoy the sea breezes,
The excitement of being on a small vessel,
In the vast living, breathing ocean,
shines on their open, sun-drenched faces.

A wave of utter loneliness breaks over her.
The tiny oceans in her cells interpret the water’s expanse,
as their own personal inadequacy.
She feels the glaring truth of our essential separation;
the constricting boundary waters of her soul and skin.

This hollow feeling we all have known from time to time.
For some of us it is a constant.
We often assign the blame of it to a mother, a lover,
a negligent sister or friend,
perhaps a lack of physical beauty or too much fame.

My friend resists assigning cause to the emptiness.
She experiments with breathing into it,
all the way into the back of her lungs and skull.
She stares at its searing pain, welcomes it.

Begins to understand that this intrinsic loneliness,
When ignored or distracted,
Can become a stagnant pool of fear,
resentment, perhaps self-pity,
rather than a reliable tide of awareness,
that we are often alone yet always entwined.


For Krista, Jazz hands forever!
Copyright © 2009 Virginia Lee Sprague