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Depth

It starts in the morning with a lake, blue and cold.

Then an aluminum rowboat with a triangular piece in the bow large enough for a boy to lay his chest on and lean out over the water.

The boat turns, slowly, oars askew, and the boy gazes into the depths of the water, clear, waiting for the sun to rise. And when it crests over the mountain and the light streams into the water the boy can see all the way to the sandy bottom, maybe 16 feet below him.

This alone he has waited for, this moment of liquid beauty.

Raised on the shore of Kootenay Lake, I am bound still to its changing surface.

When I dream at night the water of that lake is there, forming the dark moving background. Out of it come all the images of life and death, all the fears and dreams and certain comfort at never seeing, but always knowing that there are sturgeon down there.

Sturgeon, prehistoric fish of legend, are real denizens of the weedy deep. I spent hours of anticipation, and sometimes irrational fear, bonded to the liquid law of water, the creed of buoyancy, the truths of flow and gravity.

Lungless, the great fish survive the depth, less evolved, less aware, but primal and old and I never ever in my whole life saw one. This fact, and the fact of human mind, transformed them into a sort of language - Fish Talk.

When I say Sturgeon, my epidermis tingles, my midbrain vibrates, my stomach jumps. Not like trout, the small miracles of mountain streams who’s diamond flash at the end of a fly line means triumph, means zing of line, means hard jumping handful of real touch.

Trout are seen, are known, are caught.

Sturgeon are unseen, unknown, elusive.

They cruise along the bottom of the mind: safe sharks scavenging thoughts, growing large on submerged truths, personal loss, making flesh of forgotten soul.

This is the balance;

Trout and Sturgeon.

Both fish guide me. Both words out of water, flare gills, helpless suggestions to return to thicker realms.

So I am pulled to depth. The depths of lake and mountain, water and sky, ocean and outer space. The depth of human company, the depth of conversation, language, poetry and thought.

Nothing satisfies me more than looking into depth. And there is depth everywhere, available to us. Depth in the dew on the grass in the meadow. Depth in the air between the neighbor’s house and ours across which the sound of a piano comes. These moments contain simple everyday elements and are living haiku.

How long has it been since you looked into depth? How long has your sturgeon traveled unknown inside you? Why not take some time to seek it. I would be happy to hear what you find, or have found, in your investigation into the deep. You can respond to this call by sending me an e-mail at: ionparadox@hotmail.com

picture of Richard

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