![]() ![]() To what accepts, in a moment of stillness, the reflection of a face, a tree in leaf, but holds nothing, and itself cannot be held.Īs a child he had his own names for the sea. To what, in all its many forms, as ocean, pool, stream, is shifting and insubstantial. But for the whole of his life he has been drawn, in his other nature, to his mother's element. All the grains that were miraculously called together at his birth to make just these hands, these feet, this corded forearm, will separate and go their own ways again. One day, he knows, he will go back to it. The man is a fighter, but when he is not fighting he is a farmer, earth is his element. Small waves slither to his sandalled feet, then sluice away with a rattling sound as the smooth stones loosen and go rolling. But today in the dawn light it is pondlike. The gulf can be wild at times, its voices so loud in a man's head that it is like standing stilled in the midst of battle. ![]() He hunkers down now on the shelving pebbles at its edge, bunches his cloak between his thighs. The sea surface bellies and glistens, a lustrous silver-blue-a membrane stretched to a fine transparency where once, for nine changes of the moon, he had hung curled in a dream of pre-existence and was rocked and comforted. He lifts his head, turns his face to the chill air that moves in across the gulf, and tastes its sharp salt on his lip. The voice this man is listening for is the voice of his mother. ![]()
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