A Minnesota farmer poet
by Maxine
Today is the birthday of poet, Robert Bly, born in Madison, Minnesota in 1926. Bly is known for his deep resonant voice in public readings and his deft and sensitive translations of the poetry of Persian poet Kabir as well as poets of other countries. Heavily influenced by Kabir and other Persian poets, his poems often exhort the reader to undergo some transformation of spirit to acheive some measure of peace of mind and acceptance. Bly is also wll known in the men's movement as the author of Iron John, his call to men to examine their more feminine, intuitive sides, and has led numerous workshops exploring these ideas experientially. Following is a timely poem that describes a trip with his parents who have grown old:
Driving my Parents Home at Christmas
As I drive my parents home through the snow
their frailty hesitates on the edge of a mountainside.
I call over the cliff
only snow answers.
They talk quietly
of hauling water of eating an orange
of a grandchild's photograph left behind last night.
When they open the door of their house they disappear.
And the oak when it falls in the forest who hears it through miles and miles of silence?
They sit so close to each other¡as if pressed together by the snow.
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