Poem for the month: The Current

These fish have no eyes
these silver fish that come to me in dreams,
scattering their roe and milt
in the pockets of my brain.

But there's one that comes--
heavy, scarred, silent like the rest,
that simply holds against the current,

closing its dark mouth against
the current, closing and opening
as it holds to the current.

Raymond Carver was a sad mope but a talented writer. I think this poem fits the mood of the month, of the life, I'm living. Plus, you know, Carver enjoyed some booze, to put it lightly. If there's something Altman's Short Cuts fails to do in translation, it's the impossible, really: to put in the rhythms of Carver's sentences. Both are downers, but they offer a kind of substantive view of life, of the world, that I can dig. Even when the river is a site of death. That's my only complaint with Carver: his fear of the water often overcomes his work. I hope it's clear that's a complaint about my taste, and not his words (as an argument for a certain kind of philosophy), because I fear it, too; but, more importantly, as much as water calms me, I find it exciting. --RWK

[Pic: me, resting, in the Grand Canyon, 2006]