Still life with cello notes

 I think about you, you are the Cenotes.

I am sitting in a room where a Picasso is hanging, when I first hear some notes from a cello.  It’s raining outside and the people say it’s the first rain in six weeks.

I’m thinking about drifting and sinking, so I begin to climb down the slippery ladder steps into the water of a Cenote.  I’m afraid that I might fall, but I don’t.

Deep in the middle of Mexico, I remember something that I had long forgotten and it makes me happy.  I balance my breathing and concentrate on just one-step at a time.  For each note of the cello suite, one-step down.  In the end, I’m at the bottom, and the water looks delightful, this indigo cave water is warm and serene.

I breathe into the sound and I forget the rain.  I feel the bedrock limestone of Yucatán groundwater, and I forget to remember Picasso.

I have eased down slowly.  The air is different here, inside the earth.  And I can’t seem to remember the journey at all.  So I swim under it and it smells like history.  I hear a familiar voice say to me, I know you because you’ve been here before.

Is this my own echo, or am I the echo beneath?

Floating on my back, I adjust to the salty warmth and the memory of my ancestors dancing.  My heart expands but I can’t stay here too long.  Beneath the water, the urge to stay is strong, but a waning gibbous moon reminds me to go back to the brightness.  One stroke at a time, movements in harmony with the cello notes, back to the music, to the room with the Picasso in it.

Back to the rain.