For Linda Hogan after Reading Carry I have never pulled a hawk or an eagle screaming from the river, nor one dead and clinging to the hope of its last meal. But I do know how to carry water, and how to let it carry me. I have hauled the dented metal bait bucket, splashing with tea- colored water, up the hill to soothe the tender new roots of a multitude of plantings, the coral bells that didn't take hold, the Miss Kim Lilac that did. I have slaked the yard with the golden sun that shimmers even now in the grass as dandelion. I've sugared it with sunset violets. When I carry water in my bucket, my hands, my arms, I carry the sun, the moon, I carry iron. I carry the body of that old catfish that lurked about under the dock for days then rolled over and washed to shore. I took my shovel, scooped him up and threw him out into the current to travel one more day, but his essence is still there as I lean over the dock and plunge my bucket down and lift it out, water gushing over its sides. I carry it to the lawn chair, set it down, and watch the water swirl with seed and sediment and a thousand un-nameable inexplicable forms of life. Some folks will think that water is blue, or clear, but you and I know about true water - teeming, dense - water stained by tannin and iron and stippled with duckweed and nymphs and danced upon by sunlight and walking sticks and parted by talon and fin and paddle and muskrat's wake. When I part the water with my body, I am both eagle and fish, wing and fin, feather and scale. When I part the water with my body, diving below the sun's reflection, I am both sun and ice, iron and rust, bucket and birch, wine and willow. I am moonlight. I have never pulled a hawk from the river, dead or alive, but I have hauled myself from the water, pale and shimmering with life. Laura L. Hansen
Link to Linda Hogan’s Poem Carry:
I grew up on the Mississippi River in Central Minnesota and only recently sold the family home there. I am drawn to water, wterfalls, streams, rivers, lakes. So much so that I once had a boyfriend nickname me AquaGirl. When I read Hogan’s Carry in her collection Dark. Sweet. I felt so connected - to her, to the river, to the water that has always felt like my body’s true home - I was inspired to write for what seems like the millionth time about the river. Each time I am deeply drawn into my truest most earth-based self.
Thank you for sharing my poetry and musings. I hope there is a poem out there waiting to inspire you today.