Seeing Through Water

SEEING THROUGH WATER

ROBERT VIVIAN

The pebble at the bottom of the stream is the eye of the world
  looking through cold water
    and it never stops staring:
It sees that there is nothing left to give,
  That the light trapped inside keeps
    Falling into a well where there is no water.
The pebble says,
  These are my gifts to you: my failures, my leaking
  bucket, my lack of being whole--
    rounded by water and time,
    by rolling, drifting, settling, watching.
If you could see what the pebble sees, would you keep your eyes open
    and never blink;
Would you remain standing--or would you fall to your knees
  and pray to the light all around you,
    waiting for the current to move you?
How would you bear to never stop seeing, never blinking,
or closing your eyes,
  dreaming the sun into something it isn't?
You would wish for anything to bring you up out of the
water and this seeing--
  a shoe lace, a boot heel, the body of a trout where
you hang
  suspended and the gullet is sliced open like a book of wet leaves.
You would do anything to close your eyes again--even to beauty--
  and listen to the water coming down the small valley
where it sings of a time when everything was one,
  when you were one,
    when the pebble was not a broken flaw
from the one great and immutable Thing.

Robert Vivian's first book of essays, Cold Snap As Yearning, won the the Society of Midland Author's award in adult nonfiction. He's currently an assistant professor of English at Alma College in Michigan. Over twenty of his plays have been produced in New York City.

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