It is still Friday for a couple more hours, so feel that I can squeak in a poem for today. V. good ending to this week. Enjoyed this poem sent courtesy of The Writer's Almanac as I realize some of my discomfort with the present is craning my neck to look back at what now appears, halcyonic.
This is not
a problem
for the neckless.
Fish cannot
recklessly
swivel their heads
to check
on their fry;
no one expects
this. They are
torpedoes of
disinterest,
compact capsules
that rely
on the odds
for survival,
unfollowed by
the exact and modest
number or goslings
the S-necked
goose is—
who if she
looks back
acknowledges losses
and if she does not
also loses.
"Don't Look Back" by Kay Ryan, from Say Uncle. © Grove Press, 2000.
A Certain Kind of Eden
ReplyDeleteIt seems like you could, but
you can’t go back and pull
the roots and runners and replant.
It’s all too deep for that.
You’ve overprized intention,
have mistaken any bent you’re given
for control. You thought you chose
the bean and chose the soil.
You even thought you abandoned
one or two gardens. But those things
keep growing where we put them—
if we put them at all.
A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall.
Even the one vine that tendrils out alone
in time turns on its own impulse,
twisting back down its upward course
a strong and then a stronger rope,
the greenest saddest strongest
kind of hope.
Kay Ryan, "A Certain Kind of Eden" from Flamingo Watching, Copper Beech Press, Copyright © 1994 by Kay Ryan.