I Could Say I Believe in the Ocean

Today for Spiritual Journey Thursday we are sharing about Carol's One Little Word BELIEVE. Be sure to visit Holly for links from other pilgrims!

"Believe," for me, is an essential word. I think I have spent a good deal of my life thinking about what I believe instead of just believing. Every few years I write a "Creed" poem, and what I find is that what I believe is far less firmament than water -- always shifting, swirling, moving, changing. For a long time this movement bothered me. Shouldn't I know what I believe in? Shouldn't it be more permanent than that? But one has only to look at the natural world to know that change, flux, movement is the way of all living (and nonliving) things.

Here are some things I am working on believing right now:

I am enough.
I am exactly where I am meant to be.

And, going with these water-y feelings, here is a new "creed" poem.

I Could Say I Believe in the Ocean

But what I mean is,
I believe in water:
leagues wide
and miles deep,
still-cool-cold on one shore,
warm-salty on the other.

I believe in clownfish
and anemone,
riotous coral reef
and cruising grouper,

octopuses origami-ing
themselves into
castaway bottles
and now-you-see-em-
now-you-don't krill
diving into
the mouths of whales.

I believe in turquoise
and teal, cobalt
and blacker-than-black.
In shipwrecks
and tsunamis
and deep-sea
luminescence.

I believe in a world
with enough anything
for everyone
where I am a boat
floating quiet
as a moon jellyfish,

weaving between sharks
and icebergs,
allowing the current
to carry me
wherever it will.
- Irene Latham