Waters of Kanazawa (a meditation)
I sit.
I listen to water
trickle like cotton mallets on bamboo.
I sit.
I wait for whisper truth
to build to brimming cacophony.
I sit.
I pray to kami of the stream
straining for secrets that won’t come.
I hear
soft beat serenade,
the tap tap tapping of water on stone.
I sit
and I wait.
I wait
and I pray.
I wait
and I listen.
I wait.
I wait.
I wait.
Over the hill and through the waves
– for my Edinburgh Blue Ball brothers
I lost my glasses in the waves
– a selkie-shaped ballerino,
pirouetting and spinning as they lift me,
fingers pointing skyward, barely brushing the sun.
The water washes with ageless abandon
making grown men giggling mermaids,
sputtering salt and sand until judgement and woe
are surf broken on beds of communion.
The icy North Sea pushes it all out,
sorrow drifting further away, unbuoyed and sinking,
my body numb to weighty cares,
melancholy ripped free, unnoticed, into undertow.
I stay there, stinging cool skin, smiling as waves
churn endless blue champions, like mad kelpies
dragging the last thrashing burden away,
never to been seen again.
I lost my glasses in the waves
and I am blinded by the cold morning sea.
But the salty air and laughter hold me
free and open, revealing all of its gifts.
Themo H Peel (he/him) is a writer and illustrator based in Edinburgh Scotland. He has published two young adult science fiction novels, and has poetry published in Arlington Literary Journal, Dillydoun Review, and Beyond Queer Words. He has been a featured poet with I Am Loud productions performing during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and at the Scottish Storytelling Centre. As an artist and tutor he has a passion for inspiring diverse (minority, LGBTQ+, neurodiverse, disabled) young people to use art as a tool for self-actualisation. He holds a BA in Fine Art from Yale University and an MSc in Creative Writing from Edinburgh University.

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