Glass Fish

04/01/80

River water flaps sluggishly against the post, a rare, clean, see-through water in one of the country’s most polluted rivers, glistening with sunlight as if each thing it touches is covered in jewels.

The aftermath of last night’s storm stirred up the sand, pushing and pulling soil from either side as to leave streaks across the surface so that from the distance of the bridge over which I come, it looks like the petals of a large daisy.

This has become my river as it was my family’s before me, and I have possessed by its moods, riled by its rising tides, and comforted by their decline, so that the river and I have calmed from each of our respective storms overnight.

This old river suffering from the abuse of time, the old mills pouring poison into it until too dangerous to touch, while I sometimes poison myself, filling myself with rage that I have no more outlet for than the river does, and so, we both must bear our poisons until we reach some unsuspecting victim downstream, the innocent bystander to some crime they have no part in, though in fact my crime is far worse than the river’s, since I misused my gifts to hurt my poetry, serving as a weapon, each word a bullet aimed as some person’s heart – and not for the first time.

Perhaps, we – this river and I – have no other way to express ourselves except to let flow what is inside of us, and so, unable to speak in any other ways, we speak in the only way we can, this river overflowing its banks during high-tide storms such as last night, while I scribble out poetry that I hand to some poor barfly who mistakenly believes I loved her, when I do not.

And in handing her this word-polluted paper, I led her mistakenly to believe the poem professed love instead of outrage, and then I bore witness to her wilting in the same way the river does each thing its polluted water touches, her face growing pale just as the dying fireweed does at high tide as she read my hateful gift.

She deserves better, even if I do not care for her in the way she expects, and I should know better, needing a lesson in how to avoid hurting people who are innocent of anything except false expectation.

I live with the illusion of truth being something pure, and decent, when down deep I suspect its cold touch does as much harm as it does good, and that somehow, we who wield it for our own purposes must make the judgement as to when and where and at whom to release it, to hold it back when professing it produces only pain.

I excuse myself by being swept up in the storm, being divorced from the original cause, Kathy’s attempt to kill herself, not over me or my poem, but over men who have used and abused her, pushing her from one shore to another so that she could not tell to which side of the river she was supposed to go, a typical situation as school where upper-classmen and professors often take advantage of the awed-innocence of people like her, and in my presumption of comfort, I write words that seem like love but are not love, and then, to rescue her from this misconception, I toss another poem, one weighed down with lead rather than feathers, and she goes down again – perhaps for the third time.

She claims my first poem saved her life; clearly the second one did just the reverse.

I keep thinking of the old oriental proverb, the one which says that if you save a life, you are responsible for it.

Yet, too many times of late my kindness has been mistaken for affection, and my caring mistaken for love. This is a fragile world with glass fish swimming. And though I can see their struggle, I cannot see mine. They seem transparent and without substance, while I see myself as firm.

 Perhaps I am the one who is transparent and not them, making my noble search for truth less viable.

 Perhaps, standing here beside the river, I only think I see the bottom, when I do not.