Braided Creek. Jim Harrison
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To Dan Gerber
Contents
1 Body
Books by Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison
Links
How one old tire leans up against
another, the breath gone out of both.
Old friend,
perhaps we work too hard
at being remembered.
Which way will the creek
run when time ends?
Don’t ask me until
this wine bottle is empty.
While my bowl is still half full,
you can eat out of it too,
and when it is empty,
just bury it out in the flowers.
All those years
I had in my pocket.
I spent them,
nickel-and-dime.
Each clock tick falls
like a raindrop,
right through the floor
as if it were nothing.
In the morning light,
the doorknob, cold with dew.
The Pilot razor-point pen is my
compass, watch, and soul chaser.
Thousands of miles of black squiggles.
Under the storyteller’s hat
are many heads, all troubled.
At dawn, a rabbit stretches tall
to eat the red asparagus berries.
The big fat garter snake
emerged from the gas-stove burner
where she had coiled around the pilot light
for warmth on a cold night.
Straining on the toilet
we learn how
the lightning bug feels.
For sixty-three years I’ve ground myself
within this karmic mortar. Yesterday I washed
it out and put it high on the pantry shelf.
All I want to be
is a thousand blackbirds
bursting from a tree,
seeding the sky.
Republicans think that all over the world
darker-skinned people are having more fun
than they are. It’s largely true.
Faucet dripping into a pan,
dog lapping water,
the same sweet music.
The nuthatch is in business
on the tree trunk,
fortunes up and down.
Oh what dew
these mortals be.
Dawn to dark.
One long breath.
The wit of the corpse
is lost on the lid of the coffin.
A book on the arm of my chair
and the morning before me.
Everyone thought I’d die
in my twenties, thirties, forties, fifties.
This can’t go on forever.
There are mornings
when everything brims with promise,
even my empty cup.
Two squirrels fight
to near death,
red blood flecking green grass,
while chipmunks continue feeding.
What pleasure: a new straw hat
with a green brim to look through!
Rowing across the lake
all the dragonflies are screwing.
Stop it. It’s Sunday.
Throw out the anchor
unattached to a rope.
Heart lifts as it sinks.
Out of my mind at last.
On every topographic map,
the fingerprints of God.
When we were very poor one spring
I fished a snowy river and caught