The fish is in the sea
and the sea is in the fish,
so that every muscle,
every organ, floats in brine.
I breathe in the chill,
right air of the morning
and oxygen binds into molecules,
unites my body to the world.
Beloved, by what element
does my soul gather in the divine?
What part of my past, what hope,
is made whole by mysteries
that expand everywhere
and lay curled within me,
beyond me,
both of and not of the world?
Illumination
I was taught, as a priest, to value the intellect’s way of knowing. But there are other ways of knowing. The body knows in its own way. The emotions know — they laugh their knowing, they weep their knowing. If theology is the thoughts we think about God, we need other theos. Theophysicality. Theoemotionality.
I wrote this poem within a moment of bodily amazement. The atmosphere we move through is also within us, and our physical selves are merely membranes that air enters and pushes out from again. More than that, our matter binds itself to the air, so that we dissipate in our environment, just as our environment permeates to the deepest level of our being.
And God? If God pervades the atmosphere, is everywhere, than this permeability must be part of our relationship with the divine. How do we experience this? Maybe through memory. Maybe through hope. Those words seem inadequate. Some emotion, some sigh too deep for words, fills us and breathes out into the divine.
KPB Stevens 