Hi polvie and all. I found this one today and enjoyed it. It's by a former poet laureate, given to you by the poet lariat.
Yippie!
Can Tie Shoes but Won't
– for Brendan Constantine
it said on his report card, five years old, the boy
so slung
against the river's current he was later lost
in his paper canoe, paddled
himself lost, or half-lost, or less lost than most, not
in the mid-river flotilla with all the other boats
fighting the main and churning current,
but instead along and beside and even under
the river's banks—the place of overhangs
and eddies, sloughs
and whirlpools, the shaded
place beneath the bug-brailled leaves,
the python-laden branches, the place
beneath the bank's cool clay, between the roots,
where the toothy creatures
cache their prey
for later. Did he travel always
on one side of the river? No.
How did he cross to the other side? Carefully,
cutting the current without fighting it,
giving up some distance to it, in order that,
just so,
the shades, the light, the slight un-
dulations of the river's bends, are changed,
with intention,
and for years, upstream, a lifetime,
this way, upstream he goes,
this way, upstream,
on his voyage.
Thomas Lux
The American Poetry Review
Volume 31, Number 6
November/December 2002 |
