His wife has asthma so he only smokes outdoors or late at night with head and shoulders well into the fireplace, the mesquite and oak heat bright against his face. Does it replace the heat that has wandered from love back into the natural world? But then the shadow passion casts is much longer than passion, stretching with effort from year to year. Outside tonight hard wind and sleet from three bald mountains, and on the hearth before his face the ashes we’ll all become, soft as the back of a woman’s knee.
Jim Harrison: Complete Poems. Copper Canyon Press. 2021.
Saving Daylight. CCP. 2006.
"But then the shadow passion casts / is much longer than passion, / stretching with effort from year to year."
Excellent. I love (heh) poems that explore the maturation of love over time. Passion and newness get a lot of attention, but Harrison put words to bittersweet change that is bound to happen. A different kind of love poem, sure, but a love poem nevertheless.
“Soft as the back of a woman’s knee” a phrase only someone who appreciates a woman’s body could write. This couple has been fortunate. Daniel