Poem in Three Parts

I have never met Robert Bly and yet due to modern technology and the vagaries of youtube I can sometimes fool myself into thinking I have. Bly has the most effusive voice and deadpan patter. Speaking clearly and directly he delivers curve balls a plenty, might I catch just one I'd be happy. Being lulled to sleep with his words pouring into my ear is one of life's great gifts, knowing my unconscious is being primed and awakened as I fall asleep again.

Somehow poets long gone are held in high regard. And yet there are poets among us now who can also show the way. To speak the unspeakable is a special kind of word magic. Don't look there, listen here!

Poems in Three Parts

1

Oh on an early morning I think I shall live forever!
I am wrapped in my joyful flesh
As the grass is wrapped in its clouds of green.

2

Rising from a bed where I dreamt
Of long rides past castles and hot coals
The sun lies happily on my knees;
I have suffered and survived the night
Bathed in dark water like any blade of grass.

3

The strong leaves of the box-elder tree
Plunging in the wind call us to disappear
Into the wilds of the universe
Where we shall sit at the foot of a plant
And live forever like the dust.

- Robert Bly -