| THE WAKING I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know?? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Of those so close beside me, which are you?? God bless the ground!! I shall walk softly there, And learn by going where I have to go. Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me; so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go. The shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go. --------------------- THE FISH I caught a tremendous fish, and held him beside the boat Half out of the water, with my hook fast in a corner of his mouth, He didn�t fight. He hadn�t fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, Battered and venerable and homely. Here and there his brown skin hung in strips Like ancient wallpaper; Shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through age. He was speckled with barnacles, fine rosettes of lime, And infested with tiny white sea-lice, And underneath two or three rags of green weed hung down. While his gills were breathing in the terrible air, - the frightened gills, fresh and crisp with blood, That can cut so badly - I thought of the coarse white flesh packed in like feathers, The big bones and the little bones, The dramatic reds and black of his shiny entrails, And the pink swim-bladder like a big peony. I looked into his eyes which were far larger than mine, But shallower, and yellowed, the irises blackened and packed With tarnished tinfoil seen through the lenses Of old scratched glass. They shifted a little, but not to return my stare. - It was more like the tipping of an object towards the light. I admired his sullen face, the mechanism of his jaw, And then I saw that from his lower lip - If you could call that a lip - Grim, wet, and weaponlike, Hung five old pieces of fish-line, Or four and a wire leader with the swivel still attached, With all their five big books growing firmly in his mouth. A green line frayed at the end where he broke it, Two heavier lines, and a fine black thread Still crimped from the strain and snap When it broke and he got away. Like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering, A fire haired beard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw. I stared and stared, and victory filled up the little rented boat, From the pool of bilge where oil had spread a rainbow Around the rusted engine to the bailer rusted orange, The sun-cracked thwarts, the oarlocks on their strings, The gunnlets - until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!! And I let the fish go. -------------------------- WELL WATER What a girl calls �the dailiness of life� (Adding an errand to your errand. Saying, �Since your up...� Making you a means to A means to a means to) is well water Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world. The pump you pump the water from is rust And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel A sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny Inexorable hours. And yet sometimes The wheel turns of its own weight, the rust Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear Water, cold, so cold!! you cup your hands And gulp from them the dailiness of life. |
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