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
