Spinning Belief
- for Terry Tempest Williams
In the mussel-shelled
beach of night
I dream I am a heron,
with her fine, sharp
beak—look how she stalks
and spears faith,
swallows it, rises past
the spinning phalaropes
into the purple shine of
night, the river lost
below her, tidewater
rising, spinning
like cream in my coffee,
as I spin
through my morning, feathered
by last night’s
dreams of this perfect
bird body, never lost
in the high grasses of belief,
always etched sharply
against the river. But I’m
not that bird. I’m a phalarope
stuck in a spinning, frenetic
search for faith.
This morning, sitting on
the river, ancient stories of faith
in my hand, on my
tongue, I watch the silk spinning
of one bird and what I
see is this phalarope’s
wake, morning light on
the waves she creates, the night’s
dark doubts spinning away
as she turns, sharpens,
becomes belly
focused—everything else lost
to the task of consuming
the river, all desires lost
except belly desire—this
bird knows faith.
She fills her long wings
with fish, sharp
bones melting into her
own fine skin, as she spins
her body, turning,
turning until the empty night
rolls into memory under
the feet of this phalarope.
I might find, if I could
touch a phalarope,
that the complicated
leaves of belief would lose
hold and helix away into
the consuming night,
until all that remains is
hollow bones, and the faith
that fish will rise if I
ask, if I simply turn, begin to spin
a prayer with my arms, my
feet, my belly sharp
with hunger and need. I
can feel a sharpened
desire rising, as I
remember the phalarope
who lives in my bones,
who just by spinning
through river water,
finds the longing, once lost,
to feed this feathered
heart. I remember the feel of faith,
that fullness in my
belly, in the deepness of night.
I begin to spin, see fish
rise in this phalarope ritual, this faithful
search for solid bodies,
rising in the sharp wake of my night,
and I eat, and I eat,
the belief I once thought was lost.
