We are bewitched by the beauty of water’s scalloped fringe. Standing lake or oceanside, we gaze, we fear, we enter it expeditiously. Beneath our feet the porous foundation shifts. Wind and water are nature’s sculptors, feeding and eroding life, a cycle never ceasing. Like these grains of sand, life is ever-changing. Ovum-sized grains are bathed in nature’s amniotic fluid. The granules are scattered, kneaded by fluid fingers, and blown by wind like birdshot. Seeds carried by air land on these grains. Sprouting. Growing. Water becomes vapor, carried by wind, turning into rain, feeding life on land. Flora and fauna fall. Decomposing, their elements filter into soil, rain whisking them back to water wombs. When we die, blood retreats from limbs, like water leaches to rivers, lakes and oceans, sifting through the body of earth, leaving barren beaches of stone and sand. We walk on a wheel of life, fueled by wind and water, whirling, without end. Standing on shifting ground, we are entranced by the midnight blue line, the mysterious seam where sky and water meet, the place where remnants of life recede to, where souls drift from sight. The wind and water are all we need.
Poem by Tracy Ahrens
“I wrote this piece this year . i started it last year as my uncle was dying of cancer in upper Michigan and I was not allowed to be with him due to Covid restrictions. I never got to say good bye. I wrote a letter and left it for a nurse to read to him. I drove 300 miles to see him and was turned away.
Processing this trauma was not easy and still isn’t.
i sat on a beach in the area where he lived, wearing one of his shirts and his flannel jacket and I started to write. And cry.
A friend of his told me that his family asked him why he wanted to live in upper Michigan – why not a more metropolitan area. His friend said to me, “the wind and water is all I need.”
It was poignant and the poem came. I analyzed everything around me. Studied grains of sand and colors of blue. It became an obsession. Wind and water is all any of us need. It makes the circle of life. A beautiful mystery.”
Tracy Ahrens of Illinois has been a journalist and editor for newspapers, magazines and websites for over 25 years. She is also an artist and author of eight books, including four children’s books. As of 2022, Tracy had won over 70 writing awards statewide, locally and nationally. Tracy has published two books of poetry through Finishing Line Press titled “Nature will heal” (2012) and “I am” (2017). Her poetry has appeared in various literary magazines across the country. Her poetry has appeared before in Tiny Seed.