Dead Man's Float. Jim Harrison

A three-legged goat

      in mountain country. It’s easier in the woods

      where you have trees to lean on. There at times

      I smelled bears right behind the cabin

      coming to eat sunflower seeds put out for birds.

      This dawn it’s primroses, penstemon,

      the trellis of white roses. On Easter

      Jesus is Jesus. When did God enter him or us?

Thunder

      Thunder before dawn,

      thunder through dawn,

      thunder beings they were called.

      It had to be a person or animal up there.

      Outside, walking to my work shed

      the clouds were low, almost black, and turbulent.

      You could nearly jump up and touch them.

      I love thunder. I could listen to it all day long.

      Like birdsong it’s the music of the gods.

      How in childhood I adored these cloud voices

      that could lift me up above my troubles,

      far above the birds. I’d look down

      at their flying backs, always in circles

      because earth is round. What a gift

      to have my work shed shudder with thunder.

Reverse Prayer

      I pray for Mandelstam hiding covered

      with snow in a ditch. The Stalinists want to kill

      him and finally succeed. I want him to escape

      to Nebraska, please God. I pray for Lorca

      that the assassin’s guns won’t work and he’ll

      escape like a heron flying west to the Mediterranean

      then across the ocean to Michigan where he might

      dislike the snow but at least he’s alive.

      He loved Cuba and Brazil for their music which

      we don’t have much of here. Please God, save him.

      I even pray for Keats that he won’t die

      so young but get another thirty years or so

      to write poems in Rome. He likes

      sitting with my girlfriend on the Spanish

      Steps. Can I trust him? Probably not

      but I want more of his poems so I’ll overlook

      his behavior. And of course Caravaggio

      the king of painters must live longer,

      God. Why create a great painter

      then let him die early?

A Ballad of Love and Death about Elsa

      The ambulance driver told me in a bar

      about the car accident — Elsa’s head torn off

      and her eyes stayed open.

      I went to the site with a bouquet of flowers.

      The road’s shoulder was short green grass and along

      the fence there were primroses and California

      poppies. In the field a brown-and-white cow

      watched me wander around. I wondered

      how long Elsa could see, and what.

      I found a patch of blood-crisp grass

      where her head must have rested

      surrounded by shards of windshield.

      She was a fine gardener with a sweet,

      warm voice.

Molly the Brave

      Molly was the bravest.

      In April she would swing out

      over the river on a rope

      tied to an elm branch. There was still

      ice along the bank and one day

      her body was found down by the weir

      with a bruised head, which meant she hit ice.

      One summer evening she hugged me in her wet

      black bathing suit after I brought her a milk shake.

      My blood became hot and moved in all directions.

      When we caught frogs to eat their legs

      she said, “We are animals.” And on the hill

      by the river we illegally picked trillium.

      All the boys wanted to marry her.

      We kept putting the wildflowers she loved

      on her grave. More than sixty years

      later I see clearly that no one gets over anything

      least of all Molly by the river,

      swinging up through the air —

      a bird.

Report from Valencia

      The girl ran across the cemetery

      with the wind at her back looking

      for the empty grave she commissioned. She ran

      the same speed as the wind so that the air

      around her was still. She threw

      herself weeping into the empty hole

      screaming to be covered with soil.

      Four boys who had been smoking dope

      threw handfuls of dirt on her