Mother Earths Baptism
A poem by Jessie Dale
I enter the sea as one enters a beloved embrace,
my mind softening, becoming sand soaked through,
while the waves repeat themselves patiently,
holding the sun’s lazy light in their rhythmic peaks
Mandarin light sprawls across the surface, unhurried,
the sea lifting and lowering itself in a slow dance,
small crests rising reflections of the mountains,
that watch without speaking.
There is no house here, no humming refrigerator guarding time,
only the mountains pressing their ancient chests against my back,
only water teaching my body how to belong again
Thoughts drain from my mind and body like a retreating tide,
an ombré sky illuminating a plethora of thoughts that no longer stay.
Above me the clouds arrange themselves in broken handwriting,
birds scatter sound into the air,
and with each drawn breath my thoughts drain away.
Where is my mind, if not a landscape away from me?
Summer recognises me and gathers me back,
salting my hair into clumps and curls,
learning the shape the sea has given it,
with tenderness of pain.
Where does the mind go when the body is finally here,
when breath and water agree on a rhythym.
Perhaps it loosens its grip,
becomes sky, becomes distance,
becomes nothing that must be named.
I leave knowing I will return,
because the body remembers what the world feels like,
when it loves you back.
There’s something magical about that first swim of summer, and the feeling of reconnecting with our beautiful ocean. Jessie captures that here in the poem 'Mother Earth’s Baptism'.
Find more poetry written by the Dear Em team and community here:
