Poetry Monday: Keeping Our Small Boat Afloat

Keeping Our Small Boat Afloat

 So many blessings have been given to us

 During the first distribution of light, that we are

 Admired in a thousand galaxies for our grief.

 Don’t expect us to appreciate creation or to

 Avoid mistakes. Each of us is a latecomer

 To the earth, picking up wood for the fire.

 Every night another beam of light slips out

 From the oyster’s closed eye.

 So don’t give up hope that the door of mercy may still be open.

 Seth and Shem, tell me, are you still grieving 

Over the spark of light that descended with no 

Defender near into the Egypt of Mary’s womb?

 It’s hard to grasp how much generosity

 Is involved in letting us go on breathing, 

When we contribute nothing valuable but our grief.

 

Each of us deserves to be forgiven, if only for

 Our persistence in keeping our small boat afloat

 When so many have gone down in the storm.

Robert Bly

 At a meeting filmed for Bill Moyers’ “A Gathering of Men,” Robert Bly begins by addressing the younger members of his audience. He plays his bouzouki (string instrument resembling a mandolin) and recites his version of what’s become known as the beginning of a Breton fisherman’s prayer: “Lord help me/Because/My boat is so small/and your sea/ is so immense.” He says this is the feeling you might have if you decide to write poetry. In one sense perhaps, that’s the small boat he’s keeping afloat in this poem (written many years later), which otherwise could just be our lives, especially in a stormy year like 2020 and certainly as 2021 begins.  We might think of the persistence it takes to survive the Covid crisis.  But poets who continue writing and keep their boats afloat for many years (he says elsewhere), are happy that they have.