Message In a Bottle

 Message in a Bottle 

With a pen 

dripping with my truth,

I begin to transcribe 

a message 

onto the crisp  paper.

In  a cursive I have 

awkwardly mastered,   

I begin the note  with  

the eloquent loops and twists 

my hand and mind 

are trained to make:

"Dear Reader.."

I  know not who this reader is....

maybe many...

maybe few.,,,

maybe none...

it doesn't matter.

I will leave it at 

"Dear Reader."

Getting lost in the call, 

I bleed out my learning,

teaching, writing, sharing,

my life,

until my hand is tired

and the once beautiful  

loops and twists

 become exhausted 

broken symbols

that are difficult,

but not impossible,

 to decipher. 

Then I sign a name,

comfortably  heavy 

in its obscurity, 

before  lifting 

the now inkless pen

from that which 

it so lovingly

 made contact with 

only a moment before.

I roll the paper, 

and this truth it carries, 

ceremoniously, 

 into a tight little cylinder 

before stuffing it,

with some resistance,

into the glass bottle I have selected. 

I seal it and send it off.

Closing my eyes 

I  release this

message in a bottle

 into the universal ocean,

feeling the cool splash 

of its departure

on my satisfied skin. 

Where this message goes,

I do not need to know.

It is up to the waves of Life 

to decide its fate.

Maybe...

 it will  forever

bob up and down

with every crest 

and trough ,

blending with 

the ocean that made it. 

Or maybe...

 it will be pulled 

by tides to some 

distant sandy  shore  

where it will roll 

onto the beach

to lay quietly, 

collecting  the suns rays,

glistening  in the spectrum 

of its color, 

until it is noticed. 

Maybe ....

a passerby, 

attracted to the 

reflection of light 

coming from this 

well travelled glass container,

 will bend to pick it up.

curiously wondering 

what is inside.

Maybe....

 they will, 

with great zeal and excitement,

 unseal what I have sealed,

and pull the paper out.

Maybe....

 they will  read 

what I have written

and maybe ....

they will even be 

happier and wiser 

for doing so, 

learning from the life lessons 

I have shared.

Or maybe...

 the message will lay

where it has landed,

unnoticed and unread, 

as the wind buries it in the

sand it is resting on.

I do not know where 

this message in a bottle 

will go

and what it will do. 

I do not need to know.

I did what I was here to do.

I  let go of that 

which was never mine.

© Dale-Lynn, May, 2023

I was going to leave it at that but mind said, "No. Go back and explain!" lol I still listen to mind a bit too much .

This poem is about writing and submitting.  You probably already got that and it probably didn't need any explanation  but I gave one anyway. Writing is all about taking whatever we observed and learned from life , and  from listening to the wise eternal voice within,  and sharing it. It doesn't matter who the "Dear Reader" is...truth is we really never know. It is not up to us to know.  We are here to write, transcribe a certain learned truth before sending it away. This writing is a calling and something we may be trained to do but the real writing, and the real learning we share,  comes not from training, but from bleeding our lives out onto the page. That sometimes can get messy. It isn't about ego either...that is why there is some comfort in obscurity...the ego has not tainted anything yet when we are unknown or unrecognized.  

Then, when the message is written, it is about simply trusting that what we have written will go to where it needs to go.  Thy Will, not "my will" be done. And maybe that place is nowhere, and to no one. The process of curling the message  up, is the submission process which for me is often met with some resistance. I find it challenging to stuff what I have created into what others may  want. The bottle we stuff it in is our selected publisher or means of getting it out there. Sometimes it doesn't make it to the publisher/beach.  Sometimes the bottle is attractive enough to get the attention of readers so they actually read what we have written and sometimes the written message  just gets buried in a slush pile. Regardless once we submit or publish  like I do here, it is out of our hands.  I always feel great satisfaction when I press "send" ( for a submission) or "publish" ( here). There is a letting go and a release.  And I know, "My work is done!". 

All is well!