I look east with eyes that filter too much light and colour out of the green banks that rise from the Pacific horizon. I follow the shore and miss the underwater patterns of the fringe reef that winds around the north coast of Kauai. I want to fold it all in. The invitation is there, plain, as it is for all, but I’m still too tight and drawn, too small-eyed to make a feast of it.
How is it that old worries hang on and batter? And small ripples feel threatening?
I’m thinking of margins: Healthy supple margins can absorb a storm, even enfold and use its energy. But it takes attentive time to nurture this capacity. And sometimes it takes away time just to begin to reclaim it.
It’s taken a hundred generations to grow this reef. Polyps have built their limestone micro homes, silently cementing one on top of another, depositing themselves, growing and spreading and coiling the reef around Kauai’s north shore. From my spot on the bank I can see the waves break hundreds of feet off this protected shore. The extent of the reef. The reef protects and also supports a rich abundance of life.
Perhaps a heart with a good reef is a capable and wise and loving heart.
How will it take to unwind? decompress? recover the capacity of margin? I thank God for the two Mourning doves who visit. I’m counting on them to speak to me when I’m ready to hear. The Bantam rooster however is incessant this morning, as if I were the disciple Peter.
