But why not be this lake instead,
icy blue, and the little white curls
of waves, it;s absolute refusal
to be a human? Why not be a thing?
Why not be a place
you'd go to get away
form your mothers frontal lobe eroding
as the faxed medical report has it?
why not a lovely blue-turning-green
and why not the removal of all feeling?
Maybe she'd rather you be a lake,
a way to lie still in the world,
a melted-down pool of snow,
a place to rest.
you could let yourlself wash up on foreign shores
or be the surface across which boats ply their trade,
taking humans from one shore in sun
to the other side in shade.
You remember humans, dont you?
The ones who row the boat,
who act for all the world
as if they know where they are going?
This poem actually meant allot more to m after I had read it about 5 or 6 times. I think what Jim Moore is trying to convey is a foreign and far fetched idea of what we humans think the world is. These simple yet powerful statements are saying for example, "why not be a place you'd go to get away?", or when it says, "why not be a thing?", or " why not be the surface across which boats ply their trade?" Finally in my opinion the most powerful line in the poem isYou remember humans, don't you?" So the emphasis is on the things that maybe us humans could not compare to be equalized or greater than a human itself. Its almost as if the power is reversed, and things such as nature are describing humans. In this poem it talks about "or be the surface across which boats ply their trade, taking humans from one shore in sun, to the other in shade." This making it seam like the ocean is literally, or personifying taking a human across the sea therfore putting the emphasis in the ocean which is unusal. An analogy is maybe the ocean is the actual trunk of a tree, and the human is the leaves on the tree. I think this poem makes you think allot about how wonderful things are that we take for grantid, such as that one place you go to get away, or the little white curls on top of the waves in florida or at the lake.
I really like your reading of this one. For me, it's a little bit about a way to escape grief--some of these poems in the book are about the death of his mother, and it feels like he's taking comfort in the idea of being something other than a thinking, feeling human being for a little while.
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