IT FEELS LIKE TODAY

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rainer maria rilke and bathophobia

these are two poems about how i feel sometimes.

I,5

i love the dark hours of my being.
my mind deepens into them.
there i can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.

then the knowing comes: i can open
to another life that's wide and timeless.

so i am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:

a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.

I,12

i believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
i want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

if this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what i need to say.
may what i do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
i will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

in other news, it turns out that i'm "bathophobic." no silly, i am not scared of baths. "Bathophobia is a fear of deeply dimensioned volumes such as lakes or long hallways. Individuals suffering from bathophobia may experience heightened levels of anxiety or fear in the presence of these objects, even though they know that they are under no realistic danger of falling in." i've never felt too scared about a long hallway, but i can tell you that this is how i feel about crater lake, and it's definitely how i used to feel about the deep end. it's good to put a name to it.

oh, crater lake. how you frighten me.

11:17 pm - 05.10.2006

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there's music playing: neverending white lights

i'm reading: some books

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