Exult responsibly

We are in the midst of
an early awakening of
Spring; two days of
sunshine after a late
snow, find the earth
warm and fragrant in
our twilight walk.

Whole days would go by, and later their years,

while I thought of nothing but its darkness

drifting like a bridge against the sky.

Day after day I dreamily sought its melancholy,

its searchings, its soft banks enfolded me,

and upon my lengthening neck its kiss

was murmuring like a wound. My very life

became the inhalation of its weedy ponderings

and sometimes in the sunlight my eyes,

walled in water, would glimpse the pathway

to the great sea. For it was there I was being borne.

         Then for a moment my strengthening arms

         would cry out upon the leafy crest of the air

         like whitecaps, and lightning, swift as pain,

         would go through me on its way back to the forest,

         and I'd sink back upon that brutal tenderness

         that bore me on, that held me like a slave

         in its liquid distances of eyes, and one day,

         though weeping for my caresses, would abandon me,

         moment of infinitely salty air! sun fluttering

         like a signal! upon the open flesh of the world.

Frank O'Hara

River

1953

The Collected Poems

  of Frank O'Hara

Donald Allen, editor

op. cit.