FALLING WITH THE FALLS
I first came face to face with Him when I was five and skinny to the bone. Mum took me to meet Him as soon as we arrived at the seaport town, even though it was already night. From a distance I could hear His voice, the steady rhythm of His basso. Perhaps it was just as well that I could not see Him on our first meeting, for all my other senses were saturated with His presence. I stood there, absorbing His being through my body’s pores, yearning to sacrifice my child’s body to His power so that in swallowing me up I would become one with Him – He part of me and I part of Him. Mum was calling me to go back to the hotel, but I just stood there, not willing, indeed, not able to move a fibre of my body, a muscle of my limbs.
That was the day water, in its most magnificent and astonishing incarnation, came into my existence and a Love was born.
And now here at the Falls this love affair, after years of tiffs and misunderstandings, is being rekindled.
The flow of the river leading up to the Falls looks menacing and brooding. There is a belligerent arrogance in its bearing, like a bully gearing up for a fight, totally unlike other rivers which flow with sweet serenity and smiles on their faces.
Is this Nature’s allegorical portrayal of the original Fall from Grace? Or is it a liquid metaphor for the final tumble we all eventually must take? For there is no way the fallen water can ever return to its previous plane of being, except as a misty ghost of its former self.
An inexorable flow of a solid wall of water.
How easy, how tempting it is to join the plunge, to become one with the deluge! The avalanche is calling out to me with all its might; it is so persuasive in its roar. The whole world is falling around me and I am the odd one out, stubbornly holding my ground and remaining ludicrously stationary.
Perhaps only this colossal torrent is capable of wiping away all of my sins, cleansing my being from the layers of inner grime accumulated over the decades. I must position myself so I am standing directly under the deluge, right where the waterfall hits the ground.
And I emerge from beneath the Falls reborn – all shiny and pure again, like that five-year-old child.
Source: The Author, April 13, 2016
Poet Mellow Curmudgeon wrote a haiku in response to Falling With the Falls. View Sunny Day at Niagara Falls
thank you for sharing my prose-poem, much appreciated!
Glikman’s prose resonates so much with me .. he has expressed so clearly what my relationship is with the Falls – personal and private yet so universal. Thank you.
thank you Louise – much appreciate you reading my story and your feedback on it. This piece forms a part of a series I wrote about my visit to America.