We lie in tubs up to our necks in the silk
of delta silt, with a hint of grit, salts intended
to cleanse the skin. Only our heads rise
above the mud. We wear shower caps, our eyes
closed under slices of cucumber. Music floats
around us, a disembodied track of a recording
meant to be unrecognizable. My mother’s game
for this, in that stunned way she plays along
with any of my exotic ideas. Somewhere a timer
ticks, keeping track of our wordless moments.
Breathing takes a little more effort under
the blanket of clay, cracking as it dries and cools.
She moves towards the shower with a haste
I’ve rarely seen. She prefers the hot tub, though
the stink of sulfur rises with the steam. Buoyant,
we share this joy of surrendering to warm water
and well-oiled hands that provide a massage.
Another goddess of water will be the subject of the next mythology salon. Oh, those pre-literate Celts loved their thermal springs. And invading Romans, after rebranding, kept those traditions in place as bath houses and temples. The goddess who sparked this poem is Borvo, the poem chosen to represent her was Marcus Amaker’s “Give Yourself Some Flowers.” In it was a call to “remember to return to water. https://poets.org/poem/give-yourself-some-flowers
I have visited a number of hot springs and spas- at Esalen in California, in New Mexico. . . . My first visit was part of a junior high school trip to Bath. At the time my father was stationed in England. Another one that stands out was a birthday gift for my mother. I took her to a spa in Sonoma County where they did mud baths. That sounded like an adventure worth sharing. I suspect she preferred the teahouse with a harpist in Marin later that week.
Rarely does texture play such a large part in my writing. I try not to lean on adjectives too much, but I think these verbs can handle the weight. The phrases game for this and plays along relate not just to her response to the mud bath but to the family tradition of playing board games. At ninety playing Sorry! is my mother’s favorite occupation.
Return to Water describes a personal experience, something my early poems related to mythology did not. My first reaction to writing about mythologies of another place and time was to retell the old story, perhaps with a modern twist. Such poems are based on the texts of a culture’s religion, a place to tread with respect. I imagined grand pieces in third person. Often they started in a third person plural voice, not a royal we, but an inclusive one. Such distance may allow me to say things I wouldn’t otherwise. The risk was in sounding didactic or invasive, assuming that the reader shared my perspective. Or I wrote a persona poem. In either of those cases, my masks needed to be stripped away so that I and the reader could be closer to the experience.
Rebecca’s Mythology Salon can be found in Meetup under Portland Ars Poetica. https://www.meetup.com/Portland-Ars-Poetica/
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