When all the dendrite and calcified layers of conformity sloughed off and fell to the ground in a pile at your feet, you stood there, naked before me. Exposed as originally intended, this smile of the child with nothing to fear and no one to please playing on your face.

I wanted to step in front of you and into you, so close our skin felt like it’d melt into each other’s without even one inch actually touching. We’d stand there, absorbing the other through every cell, our spirits colliding, intermingling; you permeating me with your sense of wondrous abandon and secrets held quietly in your heart. At that moment, I not only knew you but was you. I was in you. You were in me. Where was the dividing line?

And so began my littoral life on that sopping November day. The sputtering VW bug's balding tires crunching wet gravel, slowing to let me out on the side of the road. Its driver, only known to me as Kurt "No last names, man", rolled joints the whole way up using a grungy dollar bill while his jean-covered legs worked double-time hugging a can of Miller Hi-Life between them while keeping his knee jutted against the wheel, sole captain of the vessel. He griped the end of a joint with his lips, hands coming to meet it with a light from a matchbook advertising a strip club 50 miles south known for their loose moral standards and even looser quality standards. Out the side of his mouth he asked if I wanted a hit, never loosing a beat to seemingly inhale as he spoke. He reminded me of those didgeridoo players, inhaling while exhaling. Which makes me think of shitting while eating -- just unnatural synchronization. "Didgeridoo" is a derivative from a word meaning variously 'trumpeter, constant smoker and/or puffer' which seemed to fit here, a modern twist on an ancient art. Introducing Kurt: The didgeridooist of dope.

"No thanks, man," I passed.

Not from distaste for the stuff, but more a desire to keep at least one set of open eyes peering ahead into the rain. The Bug's wipers were busted -- though this didn't cause much problem; the lack of surface disruption caused the rain to merge into one solid and semi-transparent sheet of water, void of any rivulet distortion. The only distortion was in me at the moment. And maybe--ok probably--in Kurt's high.

The car rolled to a final stop and seemed to sigh though I may have projected my relief onto the hunk of battered steel. Or maybe it was a second-hand smoke effect. I leaned over into the back seat and pulled my sack out of the swamp of empty beer cans and Hostess Pie wrappers it'd settle into. My goodbye barely broke through the Canned Heat tape blaring over the crackly speakers; I'm not sure Kurt, eyes shut and head moving in time to the music, even saw me exit the car. I shoved off with my right foot, out of the door and into the black, the lyrics trailing at my heels.

...I'm going, I'm going where the water tastes like wine
I'm going where the water tastes like wine;
We can jump in the water, stay drunk all the time...

"Benthic" - abyss, relating to ocean depths
http://www.seatalk.info/

Of Corvines

Jet black shadows, dwell upon the shore
one fleck of white, promising redemption
Grey blue buckets in an obsidian well;
how deep does it go, this dankness and darkness?

Carry me over from the dark to the light
then back again, casting fear like a rock
sinking downward striking bottom;
does it ever settle or does it float, unbound?

High Water

It flows into you, around, swirling pockets of redirected water that unfurl and realign down stream with the current. I stand, feet planted firm, toes gripping at the algae-covered rocks beneath the surface in an effort to hold on. A green leaf dappled with reds and yellows floats towards me, brushing against my thigh; a kiss upon departure before navigating past known waters into the raging void of uncertainty.

It will be miles from me in a short while, as I still stand on the bank nearby looking out. I'm a memory, stuck in the same moment we both met and parted, while it moves on fluid, crystalline waters winding away towards the promise of a new sunrise over a new range.

Time seems cleaved by the duality of constancy and change. It progresses without me, my image fading the further away it floats until I'm but a fleeting thought. If that.

And I wonder, if those moments we shared are frozen in time somewhere, on a continuum I can't see or touch but can feel as if they're thriving. I'm still there on that bank, the water bathing my wounds with each dip into it. The colors change, the leaves fall, the skies grow heavy and gray with snow, trees begin to bud then burst with forest greens. Yet, when I close my eyes it seems we're still there, your arms around me, embracing, as if time could never wind away from us.