After Drinking All Night with a Friend, We Go Out in a Boat at Dawn to See Who Can Write the Best Poem

By: Robert Bly

These pines, these fall oaks, these rocks,
This water dark and touched by wind---
I am like you, you dark boat,
Drifting over water fed by cool springs.

Beneath the waters, since I was a boy,
I have dreamt of strange and dark treasures,
Not of gold, or strange stones, but the true
Gift, beneath the pale lakes of Minnesota.

This morning also, drifting in the dawn wind,
I sense my hands, and my shoes, and this ink---
Drifting, as all of this body drifts,
Above the clouds of the flesh and the stone.

A few friendships, a few dawns, a few glimpses of grass,
A few oars weathered by the snow and the heat,
So we drift toward shore, over cold waters,
No longer caring if we drift or go straight.

Robert Bly reads 'After Drinking All Night With a Friend, We Go Out in a Boat at Dawn to See Who Can Write the Best Poem' from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.