"The River Has No Hair To Hold Onto"

No matter what I do, I can never understand poetry the first time I read it. I try reading every word slowly and out-loud in my head, but even then the words don't seem to add up to much. It's not until I read the poem a second time that am I able to get the message, which is a little frustrating because at the age of 23 I should be a better, more efficent reader. Yet I like the fact that poetry is not straight forward. That it takes a prefectly quotidian subject and tears it apart, looks at it from the top and the bottom, then forgets about and goes back to it, making me see this prefectly mundane idea in a different way. How do poets do that anyway? It's so clever and so quiet. I could never be so subtle.

Anyway, I was reading this poem "The River Has No Hair to Hold Onto" by Ralph Angel last night and was so intrigued by it. First of all, it has a great title. I mean who wouldn't want to read a poem about hairy rivers? I know I would, but no this poem was not literally about hairy rivers, and though I still don't understand the author's intention entirely (I never do to tell you the truth) for me the poem meant that somehow we all get swept away in the flow of life, forgeting the source of what makes us unique and special. We trade our real unassuming dreams, for the generic dreams that everyone else holds, wanting money, houses, cars, and things, and the current of everybody else's dreams in your head is what takes you so far away from your quiet source. There's nothing to pull on to get you back to that source, no reeds, no posts, no hair.

I thought that was such a lovely way to look at an experience that everyone knows and can personally relate to. I'm still young so I'd don't think I've been swept too far from my original dream yet. However, I feel that so many times that I was going to take the wrong path just so I wouldn't have to break the flow, so I could be and think like everyone else. It's kind of comforting, you know, to be like everybody else, just not very practical or interesting.