Poet as Fisherman by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Poet as Fisherman

As I grow older I perceive

Life has its tail in its mouth

and other poets other painters

are no longer any kind of competition

It's the sky that's the challenge

the sky that still needs deciphering

even as astronomers strain to hear it

with their huge electric ears

the sky that whispers to us constantly

the final secrets of the universe

the sky that breathes in and out

as if it were inside of a mouth

of the cosmos

the sky that is the land's edge also

and the sea's edge also

the sky with its many voices and no god

the sky that engulfs a sea of sound

and echoes it back to us

as in a wave against a seawall

Whole poems whole dictionaries

rolled up in a thunderclap

And every sunset an action painting

and every cloud a book of shadows

through which wildly fly

the vowels of birds about to cry

And the sky is clear to the fisherman

even if overcast

He sees it for what it is:

a mirror of the sea

about to fall on him

in his wood boat on the dark horizon

We have to think of him as the poet

forever face to face with old reality

where no birds fly before a storm

And he knows what's coming down

before the dawn

and he's his own best lookout

listening for the sound of the universe

and singing out his sightings

of the land of the living

Lawrence Ferlinghetti