River Bed


she fell asleep by the riverside and woke up in the sea

sandy blonde locks brushing against the grass like drooping limbs of trees

which bend to lap the water running steadily downstream...

she could not run fast, though, with the water all around her...

filling up her footprints with a salty silt, quick as she could leave them


her mouth bore strings of bubbles... wet like rain and lifting to the surface

while she struggled, saying to herself...

"be certain that the current does not try to take your pearls"

but you see, the sea, it seems, she was after something else


eventually she trusted that the liquid deep would hold her

she surely wasn't floating... and with nowhere else to go

abandoned all resistance to the mercy of blue wishes...

like rivers all surrender to the ocean as they reach her


soon she knew the movement of the tide from touching it back

with the tiny hairs on her skin as they learned its motion

much the way the sand comes to know the ocean


her eyes were dark as passages hiding behind waterfalls

which have no end... but catch light upon the minerals of their walls

carved by water and life growing over their depths

misty... curved and bent... like her neck as it whispered to the water

arching her chin to touch her... the sky showing itself on her edges...

effervescent... finding a home on her face... letting light be her reflection

and her sight... a room into her world... guided only by her moments

as it wrapped around her lips like a long kiss... where two become one...

the sky and the sun... love and lover... body of water...

and now the sea, it seems, she finally had what she was after



Words by David Delmar. ©2001



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