In the beginning, with every night under starlight, I’d reach into the water, dipping fingers where it was cold, cold and deep and dark, and I’d feel as though there was something more to do with life than meets the eye. I’d feel that there was a presence unlike my own where the oceans met the shore, lashing out with foam, sound and sand, rolling between toes and rocks and rivets, too, because here, we, as a people, would bridge gaps with wood, metal, reeds and rope.
Mooring lines away like an anchor, anchors away like fluorescent light, light like radio like sonar like the words we use to connect continents, speaking words in languages made of fingers and toes, arms and legs, and then, finally, something deeper than skin.
Eyes on eyes, lips on steel, bronze on bone and frozen in time, this is what the water sees, what we see, what builds a people, a civilization born before you, after you, between you, with you, riding on what little hope an underblanket morning can muster, unlike anything but the shadows in the trees that do not exist, not here, miles away from bamboo trees and black bears, salmon streams and mountain-blind white.
If there was one thing that brought us together for all this time, it would be water. To sink, swim, build and prosper, I would like you to imagine the words that define me, your vessel of history, built upon the lessons of a better time. I would like you to trail sensation on skin, fabric, and aluminum, steel, hanging onto that feeling a little longer than you’d like, listening to the words that scars can scream.
And I, the scars you’d fight to forget, have a way of casting stones in your house, my temple, worshiped as long as someone can remember my name. In holy reverence, remember why you came here, how you came here, living in fear until the day you on longer need me again; burrowed like a parasite in the back of your mind, beyond death itself, as war, unkillable, unstoppable, returns to make amends again.
I will be waiting.