Sketch for a Job-Application Blank My left eye is blind and jogs like a milky sparrow in its socket; my nose is large and never flares in anger, the front teeth, bucked, but not in lechery - I sucked my thumb until the age of twelve. O my youth was happy and I was never lonely though my friends called me "pig eye" and the teachers thought me loony. (When I bruised, my psyche kept intact: I fell from horses, and once a cow but never pigs - a neighbor lost a hand to a sow.) But I had some fears: the salesman of eyes, his case was full of fishy baubles, against black velvet, jeweled gore, the great cocked hoof of a Belgian mare, a nest of milk snakes by the water trough, electric fences, my uncle's hounds, the pump arm of an oil well, the chop and whir of a combine in the sun. From my ancestors, the Swedes, I suppose I inherit the love of rainy woods, kegs of herring and neat whiskey - I remember long nights of pinochle, the bulge of Redman in my grandpa's cheek; the rug smelled of manure and kerosene. They laughed loudly and didn't speak for days. (But on the other side, from the German Mennonites, their rag-smoke prayers and porky daughters I got intolerance, and aimless diligence.) In '51 during a revival I was saved: I prayed on a cold register for hours and woke up lame. I was baptized by immersion in the tank at Williamston - the rusty water stung my eyes. I left off the old things of the flesh but not for long - one night beside a pond she dried my feet with her yellow hair. O actual event dead quotient cross become green I still love Jubal but pity Hagar. (Now self is the first sacrament who loves not the misery and taint of the present tense is lost. I strain for a lunar arrogance. Light macerates the lamp infects warmth, more warmth, I cry. Drinking Song I want to die in the saddle. An enemy of civilization I want to walk around in the woods, fish and drink. I'm going to be a child about it and I can't help it, I was born this way and it makes me very happy to fish and drink. I left when it was still dark and walked on the path to the river, the Yellow Dog, where I spent the day fishing and drinking. After she left me and I quit my job and wept for a year and all my poems were born dead, I decided I would only fish and drink. Water will never leave earth and whiskey is good for the brain. What else am I supposed to do in these last days but fish and drink? In the river was a trout, and I was on the bank, my heart in my chest, clouds above, she was in NY forever and I, fishing and drinking. Letters to Yesenin 3 I wanted to feel exalted so I picked up Doctor Zhivago again. But the newspaper was there with the horrors of the Olympics, those dead and perpetually martyred sons of David. I want to present all Israelis with .357 magnums so that they are never to be martyred again. I wanted to be exalted so I picked up Doctor Zhivago again but the TV was on with a movie about the sufferings of convicts in the early history of Australia. But then the movie was over and the level of the bourbon bottle was dropping and I still wanted to be exalted lying there with the book on my chest. I recalled Moscow but I could not place dear Yuri, only you Yesenin, seeing the Kremlin glitter and ripple like Asia. And when drunk you appeared as some Bakst stage drawing, a slain Tartar. But that is all ballet. And what a dance you had kicking your legs from the rope - We all change our minds, Berryman said in Minnesota halfway down the river. Villon said of the rope that my neck will feel the weight of my ass. But I wanted to feel exalted again and read the poems at the end of Doctor Zhivago and just barely made it. Suicide. Beauty takes my courage away this cold autumn evening. My year-old daughter's red robe hangs from the doorknob shouting Stop. Followers Driving east on buddha's birthday, April 9, 1978, past my own birthplace Grayling, Michigan, south 300 miles to Toledo, then east again to New York for no reason - belled heart swinging in grief for months until I wanted to take my life in my hands; three crows from home followed above the car until the Delaware River where they turned back: one stood all black and lordly on a fresh pheasant killed by a car: all this time counting the mind, counting crows, each day's ingredients the same, barring rare bad luck good luck dumb luck all set in marble by the habitual, locked as the day passes moment by moment: say on the tracks the train can't turn 90 degrees to the right because it's not the nature of a train, but we think a man can dive in a pond, swim across it, and climb a tree though few of us do. Geo-Bestiary 16 My favorite stump straddles a gully a dozen miles from any human habitation. My eschatology includes scats, animal poop, scatology so that when I nestle under this stump out of the rain I see the scats of bear, bobcat, coyote. I won't say that I feel at home under this vast white pine stump, the roots spread around me, so large in places no arms can encircle them, as if you were under the body of a mythic spider, the thunder ratcheting the sky so that the earth hums beneath you. Here is a place to think about nothing, which is what I do. If the rain beats down hard enough tiny creeks form beside my shit-strewn pile of sand. The coyote has been eating mice, the bear berries, the bobcat a rabbit. It's dry enough so it doesn't smell except for ancient wet wood and gravel, pine pitch, needles. Luckily a sandhill crane nests nearby so that in June if I doze I'm awakened by her cracked and prehistoric cry, waking startled, feeling the two million years I actually am. Excerpted from Jim Harrison: Complete Poems by Jim Harrison All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
