by Catharine Savage BrosmanPublished: January 1, 2009
The water, high for autumn, carries thought
downstream past grassy banks and fallen trees,
through weirs of river stones and branches, caught
like rough objections to a fluid ease.
It’s not pellucid, nor the mind’s ideal—
or is it? Obstacles can make us wise;
perfection may be gauged by how you feel,
as beauty’s proven in beholders’ eyes.
I step into the river, running swift
and frothy, swirling, magnified by light;
it’s buoyant, though, providing flow and lift,
resistance furnishing the greater height.
And now I think my heart’s contrary moods—
each eddying pool, dark current, headstrong act—
aren’t merely detours and vicissitudes,
but purchase for a leaping, muscled pact.
About the Author
Catharine Savage Brosman, who now lives in Houston, is Professor Emerita of French at Tulane University and Honorary Research Professor at the University of Sheffield (England). She currently serves as poetry editor for
Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Her most recent collection of verse is
Range of Light (LSU Press, 2007). Her new collection,
Breakwater, will appear in 2009 at Mercer University Press, and another new volume,
Under the Pergola, will be published by LSU Press in 2011. Her poems have appeared in the
Sewanee Review, the Southern Review, Critical Quarterly, the
South Carolina Review, the
Southwest Review, Louisiana Literature, New England Review, and many other magazines. French translations of her poems have been published in the Nouvelle Revue Française, Europe, and other French magazines.
