“On Being Young By Water”
(Begun 4/28/11 – Maybe Sort of Finished 5.23.15)
By Jane Tawel
Do you remember those nights
Of being young by water?
Do you recall the haunting of the watery smell
As you lay longing in your bed until
You threw your covers off?
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And when the sounds of waves lapped against your dreams
You woke to yearning more complete than any pain,
More in tune with your need than any Sirens’ Songs,
Swooshing against the solitary staccato of your heart.
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When you were young,
Encased within the sounds and smells and sights of H2O
The Water World held your DNA
More tightly than a womb.
Your small raised fists floated carelessly
Arguing for sense in puberty’s mad, mad world.
The moonlight stabbed through leaky window screens
And the water washed away day’s bloody light.
‘Til morning expelled you to breathe away the night.
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The sunwaves licked you like a hungry cat each morning
And the daywaves called you out to splash and play,
Luring you to your death against the shoals of growing up.
And the lullaby of water
Nixed you to sleep on dreamwaves each night.
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When I was young with 78’s
I knew the watery poets better than my best friend,
Who never really was, though not imaginary.
We traded diaries and sleepovers,
Creating the tie-dye fantasies of our futures.
We swam upstream toward an unseen shore.
I didn’t know that friends loved with oars while
I swam rudderless, hoping for a lifeguard.
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One day I found a Lifesaver floating by on a river of blood.
I jumped in the water and got dunked three times,
Father, Son and Holy Water.
I’m still clinging, trying not to drown in the baptism of Life.
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And now the waves keep rolling me along past landing after landing,
Safety always geysering just out of reach
Only enough strokes left to make it a little further today
While my arms grow weary and my legs numb.
And I know that scary things lurk underneath
And I know I cannot surface or I will drown.
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Now I thirst to come ashore and wake to
My aqueous dreams by The Lake,
And languish in young hurt,
And cry waves of tears at lost love–
Imagined oceanic love, not real –
Real love is like a desert.
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I tried to take a CPR crash course so I could teach my daughter how to swim.
She swims so hard, she sweats while shivering wet with cold, cold tears
But acts as if she’s always dry—
Modeling like Ran
For the Sea’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.
She blasts into me for being wrong about how drenched her heart is,
She thinks that I won’t notice she is taking a hot shower in icy unshed tears.
“No, nothing’s wrong, Mom……” Except on Facebook.
We paddled too far from the water world and the desert daily drowns us.
I only want to sail her home.
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Do you remember those nights of
Being young by water?
Oh! the smell of waving, living water still breaks my heart, ten thousand miles away.
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Now I float helplessly, treading foolishly in Time’s Current
“You can’t outswim Me”, Dylan the Second Wave god reminds.
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And the days’ tides run out to nights.
And I do not sleep through them
Anymore.
I lie awake knowing that soon
The tide will not return.
At least for me.
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I hope someday, I shall not burn out,
But float away
Buoyed up to walk on waves,
Young again, forever
Spending endless days and nights
Of being young by water.
Jane Tawel 