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| I love the rivers, lakes, bayous and creeks of Louisiana... |
Where Water Comes Together With Other Water
by Raymond Carver
I love creeks and the music they make.
And rills, in glades and meadows, before
they have a chance to become creeks.
I may even love them best of all
for their secrecy. I almost forgot
to say something about the source!
Can anything be more wonderful than a spring?
But the big streams have my heart too.
And the places streams flow into rivers.
The open mouths of rivers where they join the sea.
The places where water comes together
with other water. Those places stand out
in my mind like holy places.
But these coastal rivers!
I love them the way some men love horses
or glamorous women. I have a thing
for this cold swift water.
Just looking at it makes my blood run
and my skin tingle. I could sit
and watch these rivers for hours.
Not one of them like any other.
I'm 45 years old today.
Would anyone believe it if I said
I was once 35?
My heart empty and sere at 35!
Five more years had to pass
before it began to flow again.
I'll take all the time I please this afternoon
before leaving my place alongside this river.
It pleases me, loving rivers.
Loving them all the way back
to their source.
Loving everything that increases me.
And rills, in glades and meadows, before
they have a chance to become creeks.
I may even love them best of all
for their secrecy. I almost forgot
to say something about the source!
Can anything be more wonderful than a spring?
But the big streams have my heart too.
And the places streams flow into rivers.
The open mouths of rivers where they join the sea.
The places where water comes together
with other water. Those places stand out
in my mind like holy places.
But these coastal rivers!
I love them the way some men love horses
or glamorous women. I have a thing
for this cold swift water.
Just looking at it makes my blood run
and my skin tingle. I could sit
and watch these rivers for hours.
Not one of them like any other.
I'm 45 years old today.
Would anyone believe it if I said
I was once 35?
My heart empty and sere at 35!
Five more years had to pass
before it began to flow again.
I'll take all the time I please this afternoon
before leaving my place alongside this river.
It pleases me, loving rivers.
Loving them all the way back
to their source.
Loving everything that increases me.
~•~•~•~•~•.
Little did Raymond Carver know, he'd be dead of lung cancer at the age of 50.
8 comments:
Oh, but look at the Joy he encountered and had.... In those years, he had, from 45 on.......
Beautiful, beautiful poem.
The first 7 lines.. -happy sigh- Creeks, I think I prefer them to rivers. :-) Making a 'little' sound, rather than a 'big' sound.
But all flowing water.... Mesmerizing...
Thank you for sharing this... And the beautiful photo...
Thank you so much! I was sick all week & neglected my blog, but I'm better. I love all forms of water...I'm a water sign so it's inherently built into me, I think. Love love love the moon, too. It goes with the ocean. How romantic & magical & perfect is this amazing world we inhabit.
So glad you enjoyed your visit. xo
"Cold swift water"? He obviously wasn't writing about Louisiana! (I know, he spent his life in Orego and Washington). Yes, the water IS cold and swift here, anywhere here, except in lakes where it's only cold. Eugene is on the bank of the Willamette River (pronouned wilLAMett), which is Oregon's biggest river unless you count the Columbia, which runs, for much of its course, between Oregon and Washington. Anyway, even it is cold and swift. I very much miss bathtub temperature Southern waters. Give me a slow creek to a raging river anyday.
P.S. Do you have artesian wells where you are? I well remember the ones near Lake Dixie Springs near McComb, MS. They were like magic to me, and if my parents knew what caused them, they didn't bother to tell me.
Snow, I may have typed/said the word Willamette a zillion times when I spent 8 long years doing accounting/payroll at a paper company that sold to Willamette. They did have a division in Louisiana.
We had an artisan well growing up. The water had iron & assorted minerals floating in it. The bath tub was orange. Ever so often the well motor broke & we had to call the water well man to come fix it. Ah, the good old days!
PS: There is some cold, swift water in Louisiana in the Kisatchie National Forest near Natchitoches. I've camped there, motorcycled & walked many of the trails. It's magical. Here's some 411 for you:
The forest protects habitat for a wide array of plant species, including wild orchids and carnivorous plants. Two examples include the pale pitcher plant and rose pogonia orchid. Biologists have found 155 species of breeding or overwintering birds, 48 mammal species, 56 reptile species and 30 amphibian species. Rare animals include the Louisiana pine snake, the red-cockaded woodpecker, the Louisiana black bear and the Louisiana pearlshell mussel.
I pronounced the word WILL-a-met even when I was a fifth grade history teacher. Now, I feel like I should have known better, but it never occurred to me to look the word up. On the subject, did you know that it's OR-e-gon? A lot of people would think or-e-GUN, but Nevada might well be the most screwed-up state pronunciation-wise. Sometimes, different people on the same TV or radio program will pronounce it differently.
My father rarely hired anyone to do anything, so I well remember dragging all of that pipe out of the well to get to the jet at the bottom when it would develop a leak and cut the pump on every minute or two. Submersible well pumps were a real boost in reliability. To my knowledge, mineral-laced water was rare in my part of Mississippi. I know it existed, but I never had to put up with it.
What! No wild boars? Seriously, I only saw one of them in Mississippi, and it was a dead one that someone had shot. Pitcher plants grow here too. In fact, there's a park on the coast devoted to them (Darlingtonia it's called). Orchids are also abundant in places. Your great botanical diversity comes from the subtropical enviornment. Oregon's comes from a wide variation in rainfall (from 5 inches to nearly 200 inches) and elevation (sea level to nearly 11,000 feet). It's generally true that anything that will grow where you are will grow here in the Valley, but few things escape cultivation--English Ivy being a sad example. Our first apartment here was in a complex called Magnolia Manor after the Southern Magnolias that graced the grounds. I don't know that I've seen a live oak here. I have seen water oaks, but they don't get really big. I haven't seen Spanish Moss either, although other epiphytes abound, especially in the rain forests on the coast. For years, I didn't even want to know about Oregon's plants because I so grieved from the ones in the South, but now, I doubt that I would even remember the names of the ones in the South that I used to love.
Snow, you are talking to the world's first nerd. I was reading encyclopedias and dictionaries in the first grade. Sadly (& happily), this is true. I still have a weakness for reference books. So does my 14 year old granddaughter. I have a huge box of my grammar & reference books packed up to mail to her at her request. She's also an athlete, playing killer volleyball and running track. She face planted a few weeks ago on the hurdles. It wasn't pretty, but she laughed it off.
Must be nice to be a handyman. Not much is working in my house right now but as long as the air keeps blowing chilly, I'm okay. I have no hot water, heat and 8 electric plugs inoperable. Ex will not pay his half to repair & I'm sure not.
I would love to see Oregon. My ex & I were planning a trip up the West coast, but that's a no go so I'll probably never see it. I'm having scary visions of dying alone and my cats eating me. Ha! :-(
About those eight plugs; are you sure you don't have one or more breakers that kicked off?
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