This Is It

The water calls me ... draws me out ... gingerly, gently, tenderly ... slowly tantalizing my ear … then my heart … then I’m gone.

It doesn’t take much you know. We are all sitting at the water’s edge, the waves come and go, the wind blows sand in our face … and there’s that constant call.

Yet, we lie distracted. Mesmerized by our own thinking … lulled asleep by the incessant sound of the words in our heads. But, these too are made from the water … this great spread of infinite, fathomless deep and dark …

Calling us in, even the thoughts that chime into words and pictures, these too are the froth and tumble of the ocean’s edge.

But we fail to recognise this. It’s all made out of nothing … we know it in thought, in words: emptiness is form … form is emptiness.

We do know this now, yet, mysteriously the form still smothers the emptiness and the emptiness empties out the form.

As water splashes at my ear … and the constancy of the sound wends its way through my heart … my eyes suddenly come to a stop and my ears actually hear … and the splashing sound of the words finally peak into stillness.

“This is it!”… The sand blows into my face, stinging my eyes as my lips taste the brine that’s lingering here; right here … “This is it…”

The words ring true. The words feel wet and taste salty as they splash through the sound barrier right to my very soul.

“This is it…” Can my heart bear it? Can these two existences finally merge or do I forever draw that line in the sand?

But wait … Nothing whispers louder than ever now. Bouncing round my head, this echo of emptiness storms the gates … without even a whisper, “This is it…” … breathes deeply inside my chest.

I stop …

I listen … I look … and, I allow. And the cold wet splashing against my ankles feel just right, just so … “This is it …” Just right … just so. This is it.