A poem
The Sun and The Water
“hold my image in yours”, the sun said to the water.
“I’ll stay solid and you’ll shiver; ripples rise and fall.
The trees, the buildings, and the humans will see us
part ways from the horizon
but you and I will blush, turning
the earth’s sky and bodies of water deep
shades of tickled pink
then mortified red
’cause the further they see me rise into the sky,
the deeper I sink into you.”
I’ve recently moved to the coast in Ireland. I grew up by the river so the water isn’t so new, but I’ve still been taken aback.
I didn’t expect the sunrises to blow me away as they have done.
The vast, open water reveals a whole new dimension to the movement of the sun.
Its beauty is enriched by reflection. A new layer is added. The sun’s monologue becomes a conversation with the water.
Although if we heard it, the conversation might be more of an immediate echo of the water giving what it thinks the sun wants. A co-dependant couple, perhaps.
I wrote this poem whilst imagining an intimate, almost secret relationship between these two natural objects. In plain sight but never really noticed.
It made me think of playfulness, of security, and of privacy.
The playful movements.
The reliability of the water being there to reflect the sun each day.
And the secrecy of what happens once the sun meets the waterline.
This might be how our ancestors thought of the world around us. Everything alive, connected, a story.
