Deep River

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How often do we wonder how some people manage to find the time for leisure activities or even simple contemplation? If the answer is often, then we need to make time too...or risk life passing us by like a river leading to a vast sea where it might just as well never have existed....

A slightly different version of this poem first appeared on the blog in 2008. Hopefully, new readers will enjoy reading it for the first time while others will likewise enjoy getting reacquainted.

DEEP RIVER

A man by a river is always there,
usually fishing, sometimes drawing
or gazing into the air as if watching
birds in flight only, invariably, there
are none in sight as light on a face
all grizzled and worn (at first sight)
seems to shed all trace of care,
take on a saintly profile, beauty rare,
sublime, no more thrall to time
and place as the river running by,
emanating centuries of loving, dreaming,
despairing of ever finding whatever
it may be we cannot cease seeking
though scared of naming, never weary
of hoping, trying to express however
we may - in the way we look, talk, take
walks alone, looking for someone…
half convinced we expect to see no one
(if we do, what then?)

A strange man, people mutter and move on,
few daring to ask why he’s always there,
by a river, usually fishing, maybe drawing
(but often gazing into the air) a world
full of lost souls... reflecting the incapacity
of a native curiosity to translate into
an oral perspicacity leading to something
that has to be better than this mere passing on
like a river...

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2010

[Note: This poems has been (slightly) revised from the original as it appears in 1st eds. of A Feeling For The Quickness Of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005; 2nd ed. in preparation. Second editions of my poetry titles will not be availale until 2015 at the earliest. Meanwhile, signed 1st eds. are available at a blog discount. Email: rogertab@aol.com with 'Blog reader' in the subject field. At present, copies are only on sale in the UK where readers can, of course, order at any bookstore, amazon.co.uk or borrow from their local public library.]