― Lemony Snicket
Dips and twists of love and land today...
The Stream
by Mona Van Duyn
for my mother
...I see your loving look wherever I go.
What is love? Truly I do not know.
Sometimes, perhaps, instead of a great sea,
it is a narrow stream running urgently
far below ground, held down by rocky layers,
the deeds of mother and father, helpless sooth-sayers
of how our life is to be, weighted by clay,
the dense pressure of thwarted needs, the replay
of old misreadings, by hundreds of feet of soil,
the gifts and wounds of the genes, the sort or tall
shape of our possibilities, seeking
and seeking a way to the top, while above, running
and stumbling this way and that on the clueless ground,
another seeker clutches a dowsing-wand
which bends, then lifts, dips, then straightens, everywhere,
saying to the dowser, it is there, it is not there,
and the untaught dowers believes, does not believe,
and finally simply stands on the ground above,
till a silver of stream finds a crack and makes it way,
slowly, too slowly, through rock and earth and clay...
Read the rest here.
And a short poem from Seamus Heaney:
Linda at TeacherDance has the Poetry Friday round-up.
10 comments:
That Lemony Snicket "quote" was hilarious!
Another of your posts bringing up tears, Tabatha - thanks for sharing. It was arresting in a way to read the ending first, here, then click over and read the beginning and middle of this wonderful poem.
Stay warm!
Lovely Tabatha, and loving too. Thanks for sharing this. I don't think I would have found it otherwise. The images are so real, she wrote it true!
I confess, I couldn't read the poem in its entirety– too close to home. But I loved the section you posted, that urgent stream that finds a way. I also love the notion of God, the tailor, in the Heaney poem.
"Sometimes, perhaps, instead of a great sea,
it is a narrow stream running urgently
far below ground, held down by rocky layers,
the deeds of mother and father, helpless sooth-sayers
of how our life is to be,"
A beautifully sad poem, so very true. Like the honest emotion -- definitely brought back memories of last April.
Well, that's the truth of it, isn't it? Thanks for sharing this, Tabatha - I'm printing a copy of this for my journal, to read and remember.
This is so beautiful, Tabatha. I might not have read the full poem had I not read the end here first, as I, too, find it very close to home. I have been the dowser finding that narrow stream that has run underground for so long. Thank you for this.
What is wrong with the world that a writer like this, a U.S. Poet Laureate, is not a household name?
I loved "The Stream," especially the lunch, but I might like Seamus's little poem even more. "God made the thread"!
...to which I, too, added these tears!
Oh, add me to the list of those shedding tears. Beautiful poem, just beautiful and sad and wonderful. She's new to me, so thank you for that.
And thanks, too, for the Seamus Heaney!
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