Braided Creek. Jim Harrison

      an old sweater,

      loose shoes.

      Years ago

      when I became tough as a nail

      I became a nail.

      An old song from my youth:

      “I’m going to live, live, live

      until I die.” Well, perhaps not.

      Still at times I’m a dumb little boy

      fishing from a rowboat in the rain

      wanting to give the family a fish dinner.

      Only today

      I heard

      the river

      within the river.

      Clear summer dawn,

      first sun steams moisture

      redly off the cabin roof,

      a cold fire. Passing raven

      eyeballs it with a quawk.

      The rabbit is born

      prepared for listening,

      the poet just for talk.

      As a boy when desperate I’d pray with bare knees

      on the cold floor. I still do,

      but from the window I look like an old man.

      Two buzzards

      perched on a hay bale

      and a third just gliding in.

      I want to describe my life in hushed tones

      like a TV nature program. Dawn in the north.

       His nose stalks the air for newborn coffee.

      Turtle has just one plan

      at a time, and every cell

      buys into it.

      The biomass of ants,

      their total weight on earth,

      exceeds our own.

      They welcome us to their world

      of small homes, hard work, big women.

      But the seventeen-year cicada

      has only one syllable.

      What prizes and awards will I get for revealing

      the location of the human soul? As Nixon said,

      I know how to win the war but I’m not telling.

      Some days

      one needs to hide

      from possibility.

      She climbed the green-leafed apple tree

      in her green Sunday dress. Her white panties

      were white as the moon above brown legs.

      Is this poem a pebble,

      or a raindrop coated with dust?

      Each time I go outside the world

      is different. This has happened

      all my life.

      When I found my tracks in the snow

      I followed, thinking that they might

      lead me back to where I was. But

      they turned the wrong way and went on.

      I schlump around the farm

      in dirty, insulated coveralls

      checking the private lives of mice.

      I heard the lake cheeping

      under the ice, too weak

      to break through the shell.

      Nothing to do.

      Nowhere to go.

      The moth just drowned

      in the whiskey glass.

      This is heaven.

      Wind in the chimney

      turns on its heel

      without crushing the ashes.

      Way out in the local wilderness

      the only human tracks are mine, left foot

      pigeon-toed, aimless.

      Trust snow to keep a secret.

      Old white soup bowl

      chipped like a tooth,

      one of us is always empty.

      I used to have time by the ass

      but now I share it in common

      and it’s going away.

      These legs

      are wearing out.

      Uphill, downhill.

      They’ll love

      their flat earth rest.

      Old centipede

      can’t keep himself

      from leaving.

      My dog girlfriend Rose was lost

      for three endless days and nights

      during which I uncontrollably sobbed.

      Fear is a swallow

      in a boarded-up warehouse,

      seeking a window out.

      The brown stumps

      of my old teeth

      don’t send up shoots

      in spring.

      In New York

      on a wet

      and bitter street

      I heard a crow from home.

      Mouse nest in the toe of my boot,

      have I been gone that long?

      I haven’t forgotten