A Deeper Communion

In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.
        –Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For another union, a deeper communion
         —T. S. Eliot, “East Coker”

There is a river
whose waters once troubled
are troubled again
whose floods once raged  
are rising again

some force is in this
standing on the waves
calling
               do you know my desire for you
is to walk to the edge
dive into the thunder of water
let it carry you
tumbling
trusting
let it sink your plans
save you from years of success
the water knows and understands

then float
facing the deep
the blue within the blue
perfect stillness still moving
until the next rapids
standing waves
ledges
then the waterfall

you won’t survive
but the fall will take you where you want to go
where you had feared to go
a deeper communion
a different you.