"I am haunted by waters..."

"i am haunted
by waters..."
- N. MacLean


...haunted by waters

rivers,
streams,
brooklets,
oceans,
seas,
lakes,
ponds,
wombs....

I am haunted,
but not in
the way of ghost and
spectre

I am haunted in the way
of poets and
lines of literature that
pierce the
day-to-day and
take me
to a place that is
not of the world,
but in it...

not to be burdened,
but buoyed,

to observe and translate
and paint with words..
spiritual,
beautiful,
transcendent...

I am haunted by water
in the same way that
colors weave their way through
the tapestry of a
painter's palette,
or chords echo through the
mind of composers,
mistrels,
folk singers...

I am haunted by the sound of
laughing brooks and
rushing rivers,
crashing waves and
the stillness of
a lake at dawn...

I am haunted by the
way a drop of dew
sits poised upon the delicate petal
of spring's first violet,
or
raindrops stand in silent dignity
on the crest of a small stone.

I am haunted by the
tickle of foam around my ankles
on a stormy beach,
the silken touch of bathwater
down an infant's
back,
the swirl of an eddying river,
the taste of sea water on
a toddler's hot skin.

I am haunted by
sea words and sea thoughts
river songs and river
questions that
carry me
further
and further
down the
page...

to an ocean of
this...

this
vast place of
shoreless
sailing
on
haunting
waters