The Poetry, Essays and Personal Journals of Larry L. Dill
Hauling water
(and its metaphors)
Papaw had a metaphor
For the blues (the blues themselves being a metaphor).
When he was down
And you asked him what was wrong
He would say,
“I feel like I’m hauling water.”
Sometimes he really was.
He lived on the dusty plains,
The ones that blew away during the depression.
The ones drowning in water today.
Auden wrote of the war and its effects on men
I can see it myself in the eyes of the homeless in the park.
Men terrified of their lives
The way children are terrified of the dark.
Sometimes ahead. Sometimes behind.
Sooner or later it all becomes a bad dream.
The river flows uphill in the Grand Canyon.
Working its way through the rock.
Like the smallest kid on the block.
Even some rivers must haul water.
Otherwise there is no grandeur.
Still, the stream always flows downhill in our minds.
We call this Hope.
I asked Lucky if he was writing his memoirs.
He said, “Now that I’m homeless, I finally
Have something to say.”
Don’t it always seem that way.
My water source dried up two weeks ago
And for two weeks I’ve been hauling water.
But I found another spring today.
A trickle, really, but an adequate supply
For a frugal family of four.
We shot right through another door.
Water is not a metaphor for life.
It is life.
And having to haul your own life around.
Well,
I guess that’s what they call the blues.
New Additions this Month to the Poetry Project
Jake's Place
Why Now and Why Here?
May 16, 2007
The Revolution was Video Taped at the Bus Stop in Front of Toy Joy, 29th and Guadalupe in Austin, Texas on January 6, 1994
Lear, West of the Pecos
Of Rituals
The Poetry Project (A complete index of Larry L. Dill's poems online)
September 2007 edition of The New Hope Journal
Complete Site Index of the New Hope Journal
larrydill@newhopejournal.com
www.newhopejournal.com
copyright 2007 by Larry L. Dill