Time for Leisure
Thomas Doughty, Susquehanna River
Fishing on the Susquehanna River in July
By Billy Collins
I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.
Not in July or any month
have I had the pleasure—if it is a pleasure—
of fishing on the Susquehanna.
I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one—
a painting of a woman on the wall,
a bowl of tangerines on the table—
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.
There is little doubt
that others have been fishing
on the Susquehanna,
rowing upstream in a wooden boat,
sliding the oars under the water
then raising them to drip in the light.
But the nearest I have ever come to
fishing on the Susquehanna
was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia
when I balanced a little egg of time
in front of a painting
in which that river curled around a bend
under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,
dense trees along the banks,
and a fellow with a red bandanna
sitting in a small, green
flat-bottom boat
holding the thin whip of a pole.
That is something I am unlikely
ever to do, I remember
saying to myself and the person next to me.
Then I blinked and moved on
to other American scenes
of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,
even one of a brown hare
who seemed so wired with alertness
I imagined him springing right out of the frame.
In this poem a bit of self-examination occurs, on the subject of taking time to relax. Though the speaker has never fished on the Susquehanna River, and the scene depicted in a painting is somewhat appealing, he believes he never will slide oars under the water, then raise them to drip in the light. Why not? Because he has other things he enjoys doing that are more familiar, but also, he has to balance “a little egg of time” to allow himself even to pause before a painting in an art museum. He blinks and moves on, but can’t escape thinking about a brown hare in another painting who shows him just what he needs to do to enjoy more leisure in a broader world: The hare, “who seemed so wired with alertness / I imagined him springing right out of the frame.”
When have you felt compelled to “spring from a frame” that contained you, so that you could be free to enjoy some adventure in timeless leisure?
