by Dorothea Tanning from A Table of Content , Graywolf Press [Tanning was once married to Max Ernst, and was a writer, sculptor and painter in her own right. Her art is featured in many museums.
Yesterday I saw some bears at the top of a waterfall.
They were watching salmon leap up from the cascade.
It was on television, and, moreover, part of an ad.
Not one of them, salmon or bears, was impressed
by the water's will, its weight, its wrath, its wall,
the salmon flying out from that knockout force
like careless birds flying from a field of silver wheat.
The falling water obviously had no intention of getting
in the way of a salmon's destination. It was beautiful.
Trouble was, the bears were there with bear intentions.
Their heads bobbed up and down, perhaps admiring
every quiver and flash, their four feet as firmly planted
in water as the rock-face itself. Now and then one of them
opened its mouth to let a fish dive into it. That was the part
that made me think of my own headlong leaps and dives
when I thought there would be no mouths to receive me.
[Via The Writer's Almanac]
[Image from The Bear's Lair. Photographer Thomas D. Mangelsen]
14 June 2007
Of Fly Catchers and hidden lakes.
Of sleeping lizards and morning dew.
It is of birdsong and misty dawns
and fleeced clouds floating in a still pool.
The waters ripple awake in the gathering morn.
The first water birds head out for the far shore.
Posted by: Poetry | June 14, 2007 at 08:54 PM