Not hunter nor hunted be
but swimmer in this long sea
the fishes your community
though of course fish eat
each to each but rarely
one’s own the point
eat what’s available
then go a fish out of the sea
not the long or short of it
but lost in the long run of the sea
pages uncut
written while working
in a customs house
dabbler dabbled in dawns of coffee
and commutes and cubbied desks
no time for more than doodles
while the prof makes a living
off an ever changing starting line
the long market
to market to market
with a self-published book
now out of print on demand
there being no press
and came to fancy Penelope
the late bloomer
and Barbara an excellent one
and the two Elizabeths
and Henry
and Patty and Ray
but of any poems composed
in an alcove suffice to say
what a waste
yet this, and this is why
one longs for the long sea:
“No, she thought, putting together some of the pictures he had cut out – a refrigerator, a mowing machine, a gentleman in evening dress – children never forget. For this reason, it was so important what one said, and what one did, and it was a relief when they went to bed. For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was why now she often felt the need of – to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus that she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the range of experiences seemed limitless. And to everybody there was always this sense of unlimited resources, she supposed; one after another, she, Lily, Augustus Carmichael, must feel, our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by. Her horizon seemed to her limitless….There was freedom, there was peace, there was, most welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting platform of stability” (54).
From “To the Lighthouse” (1927) by Virginia Woolf, Penguin Books edition 2023.
The Coming of the Toads 