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Undine

spring is her season. we met her in May, when fields were full-flowered and thoughts of snow stowed well away. that same melt feeds her down and deep, the warmth that wakes from winter’sleep with trickles turning torrent at each dreamdustreambed’s yawning mouth. (did you hear about the breeze who loved a boulder? she’storied similarly, but her song is so much older–from when the world was wilder, and the west was nearer south.)

we came by trails through trials, creeping slow as snails for miles alongside rambling river[‘s]ways whose wizened words we echoed soft. our minds all w[h]et with wonder, we crossed over on to under, towing out our treasured troves to see them twist and sink aloft.

conduc[t]ive was that medium to short thoughts with long pauses, filled to spilling over in the single sudden consequence of many quiet causes. we carried our containers and she fi(ll|t) them with her forms, strident [und]ou[b]tpourings in the shape of [st]rainbow storms: puddles of paid penitence, a goblet of good grief, bowls of barefor[e], bottled blues, and cups of cool relief.

we drank them down and heard her, more by heart than head. she shivered, and she shimmered, and this is what she said:

i Undine am wherever any water is alive. my tidaline embraces all whose ripples surface and survive. all water is the ocean, and the ocean is mother. this i make my measure, and i need not an[y]other.

we wrapped ourselves in those humid words, our humanskins lovingly worn, and buoyant with the swell of her we swa[r]m[ed] up to be born.

Published inelementales