This is a poem remembered by a man after he
and his wife have just come back from a trip
and had an argument.
"After Returning from Camden Harbor."
"With the idea of water still in mind,
I say these words out loud and know,
therefore that I am not sleep.
Furiously my mind seizes on green things
to assert its wakefulness--
a plain, translucent pitcher quiet with milk,
on a yellow tablecloth brightened by morning sun.
I observe my lawn as if asleep, hazy, and steaming
with dew like a white sea sparkling green,
according to the soothing words of my idea of water,
though thunder clouds gathered furiously over Camden Harbor
with sailing boats rearing like horses against the flat slap
of foaming waves.
What stirs my wakefulness is my idea of you who
challenge me to break free from my tightening mind that
furiously defends itself with words--
on Saturday when water, green is my anger slobbering
like horses, whinnied need and surge from my mind's depths,
the nightmare sea where words are forever awakening forever
asleep.
And though I spoke them, they were not my words,
because my anger toward you at Camden Harbor
snorted and roiled like foaming water,
it seemed as if I stood there still asleep
repeating an idea someone else's green mind furiously
had brought forth.
I did not say what I wanted then to choose to say.
And so I could not feel what furiously I wanted to feel,
according to the idea that love means choice
or that we live asleep--
as beside the water shaking the dock
I failed to will to compose the words that could free me
from the sea-dream of my anger into a chosen yellow breakfast
scene with a floured cup and the green pitcher of milk casting
its shadow as you pour for me.
Leaving next dawn, awed from high Camden hill,
the stilled bay water seemed to sleep.
And we drove on in sullen silence homeward through
shifting sea-green light of crowded pines until,
as if from nowhere, you explained that a computer--
given six random words and the idea
each sentence must include them, all
repeating in the final line--
composed a poem that furiously made sense.
Still angry, and yet wanting to please
you, a picture on a yellow tablecloth in mind,
I asked you what this six words were.
You said, idea water asleep furiously green words."