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Friday, December 31, 2004
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From "The Stream"
By Mona Van Duyn, 1921 - 2004 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 short 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 dowser believes, does not believe, and finally simply stands on the ground above, till a sliver of stream finds a crack and makes its way, slowly, too slowly, through rock and earth and clay. Here at my feet I see, after sixty years, the welling water - to which I add these tears. |