Message in a Bottle

 

 Message in a Bottle 

 

Dripping with my truth, 

the pen bleeds a message 

onto barren  paper.

In a cursive awkwardly mastered, 

loops and twists form the first 

 inadequate words: "Dear Reader..."

 

I know not who this reader is 

that I write this message for....

It matters not, I guess

 to the being doing the dictating,

to the being in the depths of me

who commands in a voice 

so small but demanding,

"Write! Just write!" 

Lost in the call, 

an insignificant  branch 

that bears no fruit at its tips,

I pour out my life learning, 

my pain and my sorrow,

my joy and my awe.

I try to describe

all the still and moving images 

my mind has snapped 

and frozen in time over 

the wake of many fading decades.

I write until my hand is tired 

and the loops and twists, 

despite their longing to be eloquent, 

 become nothing but 

exhausted broken symbols 

that are difficult to decipher. 

I cannot help but sigh.

The message, I must trust, 

will transcend the scribbling in its clarity,

will extend beyond the page 

with little help from "me".

 

I sign a name 

heavy in its obscurity,

 before lifting the now inkless pen

from that which it so lovingly caressed 

only a moment before.

 

I then roll the paper, 

and this truth it carries, 

unceremoniously, 

into a tight little cylinder 

before awkwardly stuffing it

 into the narrow opening

 of the somewhat resistant glass bottle

I had chosen.

Sighing again,.. 

I seal the message 

into this container 

 in preparation 

for the  long, uncharted 

journey ahead.

 

Standing on the shoreline of eternity, 

I close my weary eyes. 

With breath sucked in, 

I swing my arm back, 

then forward, before

releasing with quiet reluctance, 

this ship or this casket-

whatever it will become-.

into the air.

My words 

are pulled up and away from my grasp, 

released into the ocean's waiting arms.

When I feel the cool splash 

of their departure on my satisfied skin, 

I know my job is done.

 

What happens now

to this message 

with those hastily scribbled words 

is out of my hands.

I may never know where 

it will end up. 

The waves of Life, 

not me, 

will decide its fate.

 

Maybe, 

its destiny will be 

forever entwined with the ocean's,

bobbing up and down 

with every crest and trough,

floating without purpose 

beneath eternity's endless skies.

 

Or maybe... 

it will be guided by fate's tide 

to some distant sandy shore  

where it will be pulled 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.

Maybe, the bottle will be unsealed  

by these same curious, 

serendipity -trusting fingers, 

and the paper pulled out.

 

Maybe....

what I have written 

will be read

and maybe ....

it will be received with openness and awe,

while the reader gains 

even just a speck of wisdom

from the life lessons 

I have painstakingly transcribed.

 

Or maybe...

the message will lay 

exactly where it has landed,

unnoticed and unread…forever.

And, with no eulogy or epitaph 

to lift it from insignificance,

be slowly buried 

beneath the wind blown sands 

it rests upon.

 

I do not know where 

this message in a bottle will end up

or if and how it may be received. 

That is not mine to know. 

I did what I was here to do,

I wrote and I let go.

I released  that which was never mine

back to the Source from whence it came.

The rest is not up to "me". 

© Dale-Lynn, May, 2023 (Reworked November 17, 2023)