SOMETIMES, a poem comes along because I have beckoned it. I’ve rushed toward it, skipped some of the ‘sets’ im my rush to set the scene so that you can share it with me, and I cannot endure to take time to slow down and just do it.
Today, after midnight, before even a crack of dawn, I found that poem. I’ll see if I can do it right:
“DOGFISH Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing kept flickering in with the tide and looking around. Black as a fisherman’s boot with a white belly.
If you asked for a picture, I would have to draw a smile under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin, which was rough as a thousand sharpened nails.
And you know what a smile means, don’t you ? …………….
I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country, I wanted my life to close, and open like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song where it falls down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery, I wanted to hurry into the work of my life, I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was
alive for a little while. …………………… Also I wanted to be able to love. And we all know how that one goes, don’t we ?
Slowly
the dogfish tore open the soft basins of water. …………………….
Mostly, I want to be kind. And nobody, of course, is kind, or mean, for a simple reason.
And nobody gets out of it, having to swim through the fires to stay in this world.
And look ! look ! look ! I think those little fish better wake up and dash themselves away from the hopeless future that is bulging toward them.
And probably, if they don’t waste time looking for an easier world,
they can do it.”
…………….MARY OLIVER
Yes. Well, I did skip some of that long poem, to get to the core, and you know how that is, I will go back and find that what I left out was IMPORTANT.
What is important is I had lost track of my heart, and I am always saved by a poem.
… always with love, Mom/Mimi/Antoinette
