Walking with water

 

When I was a child I believed God lived in the skies.

It was the only way God could see everything

God was everywhere his proximity was frightening

I walked the mountains searching endlessly

I know I wasn’t alone in these beliefs

I’ve written fifty years and a day, written as they say

without knowing whether my words are listened to

so I walk these mountains listening to your words

I walk old pathways following mountain trails

I sing my words I sing my song to silence.

 

Jacques Benveniste

believed water retains

on a molecular level

a memory

that triggers antibodies.

His hypothesis remains unproven

but his conviction stayed firm

until his end came.

 

I reflect on our indifference

to the way we walk on water

we float on strata of sandstone

once beaches and layered memory

water filters and holds

breaching the surface

springs and dark pools.

And I walk endlessly

on the draining land

beneath my feet

examining the new

examining the past

walking with water

walking with love.

 

Erw Beddau

has been desecrated

a place of burial

long forgotten by men

it was still there

when I was a child

amongst the panorama

of the plateaus uplands.

From those heights today

I cast an eye to the valley slopes

and see in the distance

where Errw Beddau had once lain.

The spring, the well,

it’s clooty tree remain.

It was said of the well

which stood

in that funerary landscape

of twenty five burial mounds

its spring water cured

ailments of the eye.

In this age of blindness

I sense an irony here.

 

If I could only see it now

I tasted its spring water

many times long ago

when I was young

walking winding trails

in the steepness of the day

Erw Beddau

the acre of untouched graves

remained a story hidden.

And I crossed the silence

of the high slopes

following

parish roads and bridle paths

and when these ended

the intricate web of trails

of hefted sheep

mapping out

describing

the lands contour.

Do we mould the landscape?

Or has it formed us?

Walking with water.

Walking with love.

 

When I was a child I believed God lived in the skies

I walked the mountains searching endlessly

I wasn’t alone in those beliefs

I’ve written fifty years and a day, written as they say

without knowing whether my words have been listened to

so I walk these mountains still listening to your words

words and teachings no longer listened to

I walk mountain trails following old pathways

I sing my words I sing my song to silence

Walking with water.

Walking with love.

 

.

 

Dedicated to my daughter Beth Cullen who walks with water, walks with love – who achieved so much in Ethiopia with the Karrayyuu pastoralist community and our shared love of past essential knowledge!

 

Published in TheBezine 15th June 2017.