So I'm going to read a poem that I
wrote for Robert Creeley that--
I might not have read it tonight if he were here, so--
it's called "The Deep Blue Sea."
"When I was smaller than I am today, I knew one kernel.
One acorn hard thing.
There were hills, hills more motherly than a mother,
and wet sand that lived only to get wetter.
I was overwhelmed, but I knew the word
could balance on a finger.
When I read your poems, I drank the rain.
I dug my heels in, I let weeping root me.
What wind there was sped and hiccuped along until I was dry.
I was hung out on a line.
I mean what I say, I always have.
You say that's OK.
So today, I unknit into wavy threads
that play at a grid, sometimes smudged
by a cruel and abstract plushness.
Plush as what the rain ate, plush
as what small souls incarnate.
You threw it out there, only hinted where to look.
I swam, then up it bobbed, one heart-red buoy
in the deep blue sea, but always winking at me."