Descent Into Joy

The Poem

The water was cold.Not with the beauty first — with the cold.The specific cold of waterwaiting at the bottom of rockssince before anyone built anything on the edge above it.

The rocks are sharp.The leap is not metaphor.The body calculated the exact commitment requiredbefore letting go of the edge —and you let go.

The figure is golden.Not falling — suspended.The moment between the edge and the waterwhen the body has released the last thing it was holdingand has not yet arrived at what comes next —arms flung wide, the cosmos swirling above,the blue domes glowing below,the ancient caldera going about its eternal business —and the figure between them,golden, weightless,completely committed to the air between the edge and the water.

Golden, suspended

This is the descent. This is the joy.They are the same moment.

Santorini asked you a question.The swirling sky, the blue that has no name,the ancient volcanic dark below the white walls —what are you actually chasing?

The blue domes glowing below

Not the career. Not the movie. Not the next thing.This.The golden suspension. The arms open.The sky becoming everything the interior of joy actually looks likewhen you stop managing it —cosmic, swirling, every color simultaneouslyabove the white domes of a placethat has been asking this question for three thousand yearsand is very patient about the answer.

You never forgot it.You don’t forget the night you became the golden figurebetween the cosmos and the blue domes,between the painted and the real,between what you were holding and what waited in the cold below —arms open, suspended, the leap already made,the landing not yet arrived,living entirely in the descent —

which is also the joy,which is also the answer:the open arms, the golden suspension,

the cold that receives you without ceremony,
the moment between the edge and the water
that lasts a lifetime.