poetry analysis, focusing on theme, metaphor, imagery and tone. No outside sources should be used in this essay, but you should use quotes from the poem I provide you in your essay. The essay should still be MLA formatted even though no outside sources are required.

Life surges incessantly towards impediment.

Passages narrow and the resultant

End is hard stone.

On the upper Rogue River, the wall is lava, ancient spills

Left by Mazama against the high hills.

I am alone

And my reflection is dominated by water

Coming to impasse, the teeter-totter

Of decision.

The wall of lava and its field might produce a lake

Or bow the river wide around and make

A revision

In its course, delay its certain bubbling intention

To go forward. But it is invention

That is the mark:

The river hits the wall as if to drive it asunder

And finding a chute beneath, dives under

Into the dark.

And in review it would seem, for us, little different.

Difficulties mount, pressures build, a rent

Is in the wall,

And plunging in we find a serene cavernous strength,

And pressed to run its darkness at full length,

We find our all.