Reading blog 1/11/09

Recently I read a poem on the New Yorker online called Summer at Blue Creek by Jack Gilbert. It describes his summer as a young child in North Carolina where he grew up and how he did. In a way I think it to be a poem of how things in his life have changed so much since his summers in Blue Creek that only now when he has time to stop and reflect upon his life does he realize what a different person he truly is. Here the poem is: 

There was no water at my grandfather's 

when I was a kid and would go for it

with two zinc buckets. Down the path,

past the cow by the foundation where

the fine people's house was before

they arranged to have it burned down.

To the neighbor's cool well. Would

come back with pails too heavy,

so y mouth pulled out of shape.

I see myself, but from the outside.

I keep trying to feel who I was,

and cannot. Hear clearly the sound

the bucket made hitting the sides

of the stone well going down,

but never the sounds of me.