Crossing Over by William Meredith
Having just finished 1776 by David McCullough, I’ve heard about a fair number of crossings. A recording of the poet reading this poem is included on Poetry on Record, so I thought I’d share it today. To my shame, I’ve never actually read Uncle Tom’s Cabin (though I do know the plot outline thanks to The King and I… again, shame!).
Crossing Over
By William Meredith
It was now early spring, and the river was swollen and turbulent: great cakes of floating ice were swinging heavily to and fro in the turbid waters. Owing to a peculiar form of the shore, on the Kentucky side, the land bending far out into the water, the ice had been lodged and detained in great quantities, and the narrow channel which swept round the bend was full of ice, piled one cake over another, thus forming a temporary barrier to the descending ice, which lodged, and formed a great undulating raft… Eliza stood, for a moment, contemplating this unfavorable aspect of things.
—Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
That’s what love is like. The whole river
is melting. We skim along in great peril,
having to move faster than ice goes under
and still find foothold in the soft floe.
We are one another’s floe. Each displaces the weight
of his own need. I am fat as a bloodhound,
hold me up. I won’t hurt you. Though I bay,
I would swim with you on my back until the cold
seeped into my heart. We are committed, we
are going across this river willy-nilly.
No one, black or white, is free in Kentucky,
old gravity owns everybody. We’re weighty.
I contemplate this unfavorable aspect of things.
Where is something solid? Only you and me.
Has anyone ever been to Ohio?
Do the people there stand firmly on icebergs?
Here all we have is love, a great undulating
raft, melting steadily. We go out on it
anyhow. I love you, I love this fool’s walk.
The thing we have to learn is how to walk light.
