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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.

Theodore Roethke

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Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Gathered
Lose
Loses
Water
Together
Find
Long

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I learn by going where I have to go.
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
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Long live the weeds that overwhelm My narrow vegetable realm! The bitter rock, the barren soil That force the son of man to toil All things unholy, marred by curse, The ugly of the universe.
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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But when I breath with the birds, The spirit of wrath becomes the spirit of blessings, And the dead begin from their dark to sing in my sleep.
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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The indignity of it!- With everything blooming above me, Lilies, pale-pink cyclamen, roses, Whole fields lovely and inviolate,- Me down in the fetor of weeds, Crawling on all fours, Alive, in a slippery grave.
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So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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The fields stretch out in long unbroken rows. We walk aware of what is far and close. Here distance is familiar as a friend. The feud we kept with space comes to an end.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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I came where the river Ran over stones My ears knew An early joy. And all the waters Of all the streams Sang in my veins That summer day.
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The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
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Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still calledThe flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollowsAnd love, love sang toward.
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