The Dugout

by Lou Lipsitz. From his book of new and selected poems, Seeking the Hook, First Edition. Reprinted with permission.  Click here to read more of his poems.

I'm learning a kind of skill
a delicacy in handling despair

it's like the earth
that absorbs and absorbs
and turns and grows endlessly
and dies

fires burn through ten forests
huge pressures squeeze down
on so much carbon and
preserve it, fuse it. there are substances
under the surface no one knows
about and they go on evolving

there will always be sleep
and it will always be troubled
there will always be love
and it will rise and tumble
and subside like the ocean currents

the dugout carved from a cedar tree
and rowed by sixteen men
strokes along the inner river
and the rain falls steadily, like
grief, that we need for the deep
heavy forests and the marsh
where the nests are.