What the Water Knows
What the mouth sings, the soul must learn to forgive. A rat’s as moral as a monk in the eyes of the real world. Still, the heart is a river pouring from itself, a river that cannot be crossed. It opens on a bay and turns back upon itself as the tide comes in, it carries the cry of the loon and the salts of the unutterably human. A distant eagle enters the mouth of a river salmon no longer run and his wide wings glide upstream until he disappears into the nothing from which he came. Only the thought remains. Lacking the eagle’s cunning or the wisdom of the sparrow, where shall I turn, drowning in sorrow? Who will know what the trees know, the spidery patience of young maple or what the willows confess? Let me be water. The heart pours out in waves. Listen to what the water says. Wind, be a friend. There’s nothing I couldn’t forgive. ******* ✍ Sam Hamill ( 5 September 1943, Utah, United States). ◙ Artwork: Thomas Fearnley