for the waters

For the Waters imagines sharing a cup of coffee with the shoreline of Niigani-gichigami (Lake Ontario). Extending a gesture of care to the waters in the form of a Turkish coffee reading for the future. Drawing on symbolic meanings passed down to me through familial lines, the cup speaks to past, present, and future. Reading for, and from, the shoreline, is to read from the place where sky and water and earth meet. Shifts in the shoreline are indicators of larger forces. Reading from this place of relationship between elements, I necessarily consider my own situated relationship to them. To read coffee grounds is to acknowledge the beingness/aliveness/personhood of these elementals, our interlinked relationships with, and responsibilities to them. It is also a gesture of hospitality I only extend to those I wish to build intimacy with, so it is a gesture of love and care—an invitation to closeness.

At the Lake’s edge,
I pour coffee, like greeting an old friend.
A friend who has calmed me for decades.
Horizon blurred where sky and water meet,
our future uncertain.

A density clings to walls.
Small form, outlined where water has run through,
reveals a bird in flight.
Huge wingspan in profile.
Messenger.

A body from the waist down—no head
Upper torso: mind, washed by water, maybe wind.
Waves coming in louder.
Headless body floating along the cup’s rim: Future
Emerges out of the density that has severed it from its other half.

Swallows in flight dance along the surface of the lake,
arcing in and out of the horizon.
Dancing in and out of the cup,
A gift, bearing good news.

Kneeling form
Possibly a Djinni
prayer carpet blowing in wind behind its shoulders
The carpet is the land.
Small figure crawling from the depths,
reaches to touch the Djinni’s knee.

Beings emerging from the surface.
Arising from the deep
The letter T: Someone's name.
The form of a ghost, like wearing a sheet.
An eagle: messenger
About to rise in flight.

Underwater mountain: Obstacle
A lion in rest at the base
a thickness above the mountain,
heavy.
Deep plummet, phallic incursion: Obstacle.
Column arising from depths—A tower maybe.
Cornice washed away by wind,
eroded.
At its base a kind of prehistoric microbial form,
Brainlike, curling.

So many spirits in the water—teeming with activity

A figure dancing at the bottom of the cup,
like dancing at the bottom of the water
Something from the past.
Could she be that first one fallen from sky?

Ghosts dance the eternal dance they
Have always danced, unconcerned

giant fish: success

Above them a clearing.
Two filigreed columns ascend
Capital erupting,
scatters dust.

Near the rim—the Future
Birds: The birds are coming in closer
Messengers.
Good news.

A snake: jealously.
Transformation?

Two figures,
morphous,
face each other in the darkness.
A bird, wings stretched downward,
like hunting prey—a smaller bird at its heels,
Faces a jaguar or other cat head on,
Untrustworthy.

Either in battle or conversation,
It can be hard to tell the difference sometimes.