Monday, December 21, 2015

A Winter Solstice Metaphor.


There are no salmon in the river pictured above.  It's a creek that flows through Ames, Iowa.  No salmon ever.  Yet, somehow this Mary Oliver poem seems as if it was written specifically for me. Often I am confused about which is a better fit for me - power or powerlessness?  It is hard for me to know if I am the dark force swallowing the light, or the light that has been consumed.  Does it even matter?

Into the River
                    ~ Mary Oliver


I have seen the great fee
leaping
into the river

and I havev seen moonlight
milky
along the long muzzle

and I have seen the body
of something
scaled and wonderful

slumped in the sudden fire of its mouth,
and I could not tell
which fit me

more comfortably, the power,
or the powerlessness;
neither would have me

entirely; I was divided,
consumed,
by sympathy,

pity, admiration.
After a while
it was done,

the fish had vanished, the bear
lumped away
to the green shore

and into the trees.  And there there was only
this story.
It followed me home

and entered my house -
a difficult guest
with a single tune

which it hums all day and through the night -
slowly or briskly,
it doesn't matter,

it sounds like a river leaping and falling;
it sounds like a body
falling apart.



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