The line of the water and the air

HEART FEELS THE WATER

The fish are staying here
and eating. The plant is
thin and has very long leaves
like insects’ legs, the way
they bend down.
Through the water
the plant breaks from the water

the line of the water and the air.
Told!


I am just beginning to read Ceravolo’s volume ‘The Green Lake Is Awake’* and – as always with a ‘new’ poet – there’s a period of adjustment. Of unlearning. Of listening.

I’m interested in small poems at the moment. Dickinson’s. Graham Foust’s. To name but two. And Ceravolo seems to enjoy the miniature.

It’s tempting here to immediately categorize: i) Japanese haiku; ii) William Carlos Williams. The poem as a kind of meditation exercise, a honing of the senses through concentration on the object(s). The poem ‘succeeds’ to the extent the observed reality is ‘captured’ in language.

Yet the moment I employ the word ‘object’ the ground begins to shift. There are concrete nouns: “fish”, “plant” (twice), “leaves”, “(insects’) legs”, “water” (three times); “air” ; plus the more abstract “way” and “line”. At the very moment you begin to assert the ‘facticity’ of the objects, you also begin to notice how vague they are – what kind of fish? What species of plant? Which type of insect? And nouns such as “water” and “air” don’t help us very much either.

What is being described? Not the fish as such – more that they have not moved away and that they are eating. Not the plant as such – more a resemblance between its leaves and the legs of the unspecified species of insect. Not the plant or the water as such – more the relationship between the two.

Gaps seem to appear between a seemingly ‘available’ depiction of reality and the words themselves.

That the fish are “staying here” is slippery, too. What choice do fish have? In a bowl, in a pond, they are limited by their watery enclosure. (I’m reminded of Lara thinking her goldfish was ‘drinking’ when it rose to the surface. Do fish “drink”?)

And what is impelling the poem? For that matter, what occasioned it? The gap between lines 7 & 8 seem to suggest a ‘leap’, a sudden insight, reinforced by the final line “Told!”. Has the poem, then, simply been to achieve such a banal epiphany?

Obviously, enlightenment can come at any time – I do not know whether Ceravolo is working in this kind of Buddhist tradition. Maybe something else is at work as well.

Listening closely, very subtle sound threads seem to be organizing the poem. The short ‘i’ in “fish” sounding again in “is” and “thin” then “insects’ ”. The long ‘e’ in “eating” sounding again in “very” and “leaves”. The ‘ay’ sound carrying through “staying” and “way” and “they” to “breaks”. There are further examples. That they are so subtle adds to the ‘fragility’ of the moment – or of the poem itself. Make too much noise and the fish dart away, the surface is shattered.

I’m cautious about generalising but it seems that it is sound which impels the poem. Or, rather, the tension between sounds and a visual ‘given’**. Reading this way, “the line of the water and the air” becomes metaphoric of the poem itself – the meeting of two different ‘orders’.

I’m open to other opinions ...

* If anyone objects to me reproducing this poem (ie copyright issues) I will remove it.

** And perhaps we have to be careful about assuming seeing is so simple and direct in its contact with the ‘real’. There is the vitreous humour – that pool within the eyeball – and the watery film over the eyeball itself.