Reckless Poem
Reckless Poem - meaning Summary
Wonder Beyond the Separate Self
The poem presents moments when the speaker feels released from an ordinary, separate self and intensely connected to the living world. In spring woods, an ant's labor, animals, and flowers become occasions for imaginative identification. This expansion does not deny individuality; it treats each creature's single life as meaningful. The speaker's shifting sense of self suggests wonder as a form of attention, in which nature makes consciousness feel larger and less bounded.
Read Complete AnalysesToday again I am hardly myself. It happens over and over. It is heaven-sent. It flows through me like the blue wave. Green leaves — you may believe this or not — have once or twice emerged from the tips of my fingers somewhere deep in the woods, in the reckless seizure of spring. Though, of course, I also know that other song, the sweet passion of one-ness. Just yesterday I watched an ant crossing a path, through the tumbled pine needles she toiled. And I thought: she will never live another life but this one. And I thought: if she lives her life with all her strength is she not wonderful and wise? And I continued this up the miraculous pyramid of everything until I came to myself. And still, even in these northern woods, on these hills of sand, I have flown from the other window of myself to become white heron, blue whale, red fox, hedgehog. Oh, sometimes already my body has felt like the body of a flower! Sometimes already my heart is a red parrot, perched among strange, dark trees, flapping and screaming.
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