Heaven is a Rockpool
This poem was inspired after a fab rock-pooling adventure with the guys at The Rockpool Project and features on their website. . .
Heaven is a Rockpool . . .
I feel it whirlpool-swirling somewhere deep inside me,
the magic of the rockpool.
Every time it is the same.
It pulls me in and swallows me up into its magic.
This tiny world where all things seem brighter.
Grey thoughts disappear,
pain fades,
worries dissolve,
as if dispersed by the swirling of a watery-wand.
My edges begin to ripple as I slowly dissolve into the waves.
And,
for that time,
I swim with the fish,
sway with the sea anemones,
and scuttle into the quiet solitude of the coal-black cracks with the crabs.
Silent and still in the precious pool of peace;
I am no longer my-self.
I wonder why this place,
this space,
takes all of me,
and wraps me gently in its light-filled beauty.
This transient world teeters on the threshold of its own existence.
Its inhabitants held for a moment,
as it holds me,
hardly daring to breathe for fear of disturbing the preciousness of this,
perfect,
moment.
I wonder why it moves and mesmerises,
transporting me somewhere else,
somewhere I feel I know,
and have always known.
Somewhere fathoms deep inside.
The heartbeat of the ocean pulses and swells green-blue,
seeming somehow to pulse and pump my own heart,
my own blood,
swirling salt-filled memories of ‘before’.
It’s in my veins.
It’s in all of me.
Each cell awakening to its ancestors,
its memory of ‘before’.
The ‘before’ of purity,
of nature,
of belonging.
Of interconnection across worlds,
across species,
across time.
Back and back and back to a Oneness;
a swell where we all swam together.
A memory of the ocean’s womb holding life ‘before’.
Before humankind,
with its infinite wis-dumb,
believed itself to be apart and above,
separated by its own,
closing,
dying,
heart.
Plundering, polluting, depleting and poisoning his own mother;
believing her to be ‘resource’,
rather than the gifting birther of life itself.
The gift she will reclaim,
and fold back into herself,
if we do not listen.
Listen to the cry of every living heart, sap and wave-beat, calling us to remember.
Remember the unity of this beat,
the unity of the Oneness to which we all belong.
We all sit on the edge now.
But, in this moment,
I sit perched on the edge of the magical rockpool,
between time,
between worlds.
And,
dissolved in this perfection,
I remember.
I remember the Oneness ‘before’.
And, as I look into the deep pools of the crab’s eyes,
I see myself looking back.
We are One and the same.
And as our bodies separate to the rhythm of the tides,
our worlds do not.
She sits in the crack of my heart;
of all hearts.
Broken through materialistic dismembering
healed only through sacred remembering.
One heart,
One world,
One home.
Heaven is a rockpool.
6th JULY 2022