WATER RUNS DOWN AND DEEP

Roadside brook-Ha'Penny Rd. Peacham, Vermont

THE LOVERS (WATER AND GRAVITY)

River submits to the lover’s allure.

She sways her glistening hips

Left and right,

Sliding around obstacles,

Slipping over stones–

Nice and easy.

Relentlessly flowing, 

Ruthlessly yielding,

She goes down and deep

Craving the pleasures of his secret cave.

  -Monday, August 12, 2013

Dearest Readers,

 I’m surrounded by forest streams, ponds, and wetlands here in Peacham. Indeed, most of Vermont is crisscrossed by rivers, and brooks plunging out of the mountains, or gently gurgling beside a road. It is a common sight and sound. Click on the caption under the picture above to hear 9 seconds of fresh, cold rivulet babble that chatters along one side of Ha’Penny Road where I live this summer.

The Tao Te Ching, written 2,500 years ago by the Chinese mystic Lao Tzu, speaks a number of times about water and the way. Water is easy. It yields and acquiesces in its persistent downward journey. This seems to be a metaphor for the voice of the soul, running clear and simple through our lives…not a mysterious source of enlightenment, but goodness that is always available if we listen.

 

EASY BY NATURE

True goodness

Is like water.

Water’s good for everything.

It doesn’t compete.

It goes right

To the low and loathsome places,

And so finds the way.

For a house,

The good thing is level ground.

In thinking,

Deep is good.

The good of giving is magnanimity;

Of speaking, honesty;

Of government, order.

The good of work is skill,

And of action, timing.

No competition,

So no blame.

-LaoTzu

A stream that flows through a rock wall and under a bridge along Ha'Penny Rd.

A brook that falls from the mountains and under a second bridge over Ha'Penny Rd.