Poetry Friday

For years...like, since I was in h.s., (wow, I guess I should soon be saying "decades," not years)...I have been collecting poems. They're on scraps of paper...some yellowing now...stuffed in a little poetry anthology that I got probably 12 years ago out of a bargain bin somewhere. It's interesting to look back at these poems...obviously I copied them from their source because they meant something to me, though for some, that meaning has long been forgotten. The poem I have selected for today was on top of the poem pile, and I think I remember what it meant.

You Are At the Bottom of My Mind
by Iain Mac a' Ghobhainn (aka Iain Crichton Smith)

Without my knowing it you are at the bottom of my mind
like a visitor to the bottom of the sea
with his helmet and his two large eyes,
and I do not rightly know your appearance or your manner
after five years of showers
of time pouring between me and you:
nameless mountains of water pouring
between me hauling you on board
and your appearance and manner in my weak hands.
You went astray
among the mysterious plants of the sea-bed
in the gree half-light without love,

and you will never rise to the surface
through my hands are hauling ceaselessly,
and I do not know your way at all,
you in the half-light of your sleep
haunting the bed of the sea without ceasing
and I hauling and hauling on the surface.