Lullaby for Water
by Martha Pendergrass Templeton
The path opens like a gift,
and we inch in,
unwrapping as we go.
We are looking for a
Small Thing,
but every rock, every flower,
every slippery clump of tired earth,
soaked and hanging out to dry
seems to grow beneath
my searching feet.
Only I am small.
I settle in beneath a shelf of rock.
A creek bed curves below, where
you gather and pool and rush again,
ever winding toward the lowest place,
ever smoothing, ever cooling,
gently cooing like
the newborn voice of God.
It comes to me to take you in my arms,
as if you were crying,
your flailing banks unswaddled
in the vast expanse of night.
As if my song could soothe your wailing,
calm your current, ease your fears.
As if you weren’t already
rocking me.
It feels like that.
Like the upended notion
of a child reaching out to hold
a crying mother in its toddler arms.
My memory roils with healing,
with the balm of your voice
covering my anguish in
holy cradles like these,
dappled in darkness
and tattered specks
of Light.
A breeze flows.
The sun seeks your ever-moving face,
and together you project a show of ripples
on the rocky shelf above.
Poets freckle the rocks around me.
We are sandwiched in Light
and teeming with words
and words and words.
Could it be you need the salve of music
falling from our aching lips?
I gather what has often gathered me
to my cautious breast
and begin dropping words like
wounded
petals
of a
picked
bouquet,
And if we do not sleep,
together we can dip our toes
into the soothing lyrics
of this sacred
Lullaby.
