Life

I was swimming along with the current just the other day,
Very much with the current, simply to go with the flow of things,
When a fish splashed by and accosted me, then bid me stay awhile
Stay and chat, and get some exercise in the meantime, for it is that
Much harder to strive against the waters’ pressures, and it spoke
With a voice both firm and gentle, though he and I both knew
I’d spurned him, gentle speaker, through my desires and my ventures,
Getting and spending-- that is, spending my energies to get to where the waters led.
There was a rock, the fish had said, to which I should grasp and cling,
Better to hold to something solid and ageless than to the merely temporal,
And I had, to myself, thought the speaker looked and sounded somewhat familiar,
Alike in manner to something from my less curious, more open-aired youth--
A time, at this juncture, here passed, like the fish and his rock, both of which fade as I float.
Back there my ears were healthy and unblocked by the troubling waters of war--
This War on Everything. Each generation crashes its weight against the tithes
Like so many waves in their tempestuous tides, gathering their voices to storm their citadel,
Which must be to whence these waters lead, though I cannot so much as remember
When or why or how I made the leap, or at what point this journey was started;
I just know that I will be no simple salmon, though the rock is gone, with my youth,
And my fellow fish is upstream, so hard to reach, but now those looming castle walls I mean to breach!
Farewell happy headwaters, where innocence and blissful ignorance both forever dwell,
It is into and through a hurricane of questions and opinions
I see I must now maneuver, my new guiding light the gleam of someone's saber!
A far-off galleon, aboard which I can just make out the figures of a scraggly-bearded pirate and a
Roguesome wench, alternately dueling and laughing wickedly,
Laughing into the storm through which they sail, houses that Romantic, steely glint.
To the rock and the Paternal Piscean: I will not give a backward glance!
I will on solid ground stand when ‘neath my feet hulks the brick-built bulk of my stalwart citadel,
Constructed by those who have made it through the furious winds,
Which, throughout everything-- my daylight and my evening-- all howled and blew.

Reviews

[harmattan]

Well mr y I had you wrong in my previous review (I make a point of NOT reading profiles first).
I love your way with words.
I am going to your Hemmingway piece now.
Hope you will go to minwe when I have time to post it.
H