Abyssus Abyssum Invocat

There is a chasm between two souls

deeper than the deepest ocean rift

and more full of watered mystery

 

To have given birth is not enough

To have carried and nursed is not enough

To love with this whole fractured being is not enough

 

We have a deeper communion, perhaps

with Other than with each other

That knowledge is not enough

 

I’ve often dreamt of your drowning

torn from my arms and lost in black water

It is the deep calling to the depths in us

 

Shall we take the plunge? Shall we sink ourselves

to the very floor of the abyss—abandon all

claim to one another and therein find our kinship?

 

*9 May 2015…A year since I wrote this, I’m realizing it’s a Mother’s Day poem of sorts…

Inspired by We Drink Because We’re Poets Prompt #9: Write a poem inspired by a Latin proverb. I was interested to find that there are at least two interpretations of this one, “deep calls to deep” (taken straight from the Latin Vulgate translation of Psalm 42) and “hell calls to hell” (meaning, loosely, that one bad thing leads to another). I’ll have to prefer the first sense.