HAD EVERYTHING ELSE FAILED THERE'D STILL BE WATERS

Had everything else failed, there’d still be waters: on and off of the sea, on and off, also -- slanting rays, falling down motionlessly on a brink of sunset; silent bells. You can hear them in the brawls of seagulls, Aeolian harvesters of the blue, in the clangor of halyards and masts over wind-swept marinas, in the cobbled echo of the streets winding down the hills of your heart to the dreaming sea. In, as blood, and out, as seas, enormously vast and small, pulled by the stars, caressed by a breeze, a metaphor for All. Tighter than fate’s red-hot embrace, freer than thought sublime, keener than anything in Space, it resembles Time. Singing and rolling and coming to rest only high above, sending its armies East and West, it represents Love. I can only live by the water, you said. So do I. And so I do, blood in my veins following the floods and ebbs of the sea. Only I and gulls patrolling waters ride the air. Time has taken care of all matters: nothing there. Riding at once two elements -- wind and seas -- a sail and a surfboard are but two wings, a pair, and the body nails them together like flying Jesus, heaven-bound, but dying here. In the third poem of his Sonnets to Orpheus, Rilke speaks of true singing. First, he says what it isn’t: “it is not your loving… learn to forget that passionate music. It will end.” Then he defines what it is: “A Gust inside God. A Wind.” Love starts from the first Word. First three words -- “Let it be!” -- emanate from Love. This is Creation. Every speck of matter -- every grain of sand and drop of water -- is Love. For they are -- created. A swimmer, gliding from wave to wave in the sea at night -- is held by water as by the Creator’s hand. The sky, a shade of purple, with foggy moon and blurry stars, drifts slowly above the waters. Lighthouses flash on the outskirts of the visible dark. Water under your hand bursts with myriads of sparks. You know, that, no matter how alone you are in this sea, you are of yourself and of God, Who is all around you now. And so are those you loved.