a slippery life...
David Ignatow
If We Could Be Brought
If we could be brought to the surface
like a gleaming fish and served for supper,
if we could eat and swallow our own life
to make a good meal, if we could go fishing
for ourselves and feed on the gleaming
swimmer below the surface of our skin-
the fish that is our slippery life
and death.
*
We say we know the self - I'm not convinced. This Ignatow poem puts me on the right path. We look - and sometimes even in the correct places - but that life ... or death ... is a slippery one.
Whatever that is below the surface is the real, and may forever elude us. Just out reach or sight or sound.
I could live out my life and never know.
3 comments:
Ignatow is one of my favs, thanks for sharing this.
Hi Sam,
This held impact for me - the slipperiness of life and death - love the sentiment...have just come back from visiting my parents and had so many conversations wondering about what death could be...would agree that we do not know ourselves really and that this is what makes life so irresistible sometimes - the search.
Thanks.
Liz
Thanks, Jenni and Liz, for the visit.
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