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Thank you for this magnificent tribute to Jim Harrison!

Two favorites...

Solstice Litany

JIM HARRISON 1937-2016

1

The Saturday morning meadowlark

came in from high up

with her song gliding into tall grass

still singing. How I’d like

to glide around singing in the summer

then to go south to where I already was

and find fields full of meadowlarks

in winter. But when walking my dog

I want four legs to keep up with her

as she thunders down the hill at top speed

then belly flops into the deep pond.

Lark or dog I crave the impossible.

I’m just human. All too human.

2

I was nineteen and mentally

infirm when I saw the prophet Isaiah.

The hem of his robe was as wide

as the horizon and his trunk and face

were thousands of feet up in the air.

Maybe he appeared because I had read him

so much and opened too many ancient doors.

I was cooking my life in a cracked clay

pot that was leaking. I had found

secrets I didn’t deserve to know.

When the battle for the mind is finally

over it’s late June, green and raining.

3

A violent windstorm the night before

the solstice. The house creaked and yawned.

I thought the morning might bring a bald earth,

bald as a man’s bald head but not shiny.

But dawn was fine with a few downed trees,

the yellow rosebush splendidly intact.

The grass was all there dotted with Black

Angus cattle. The grass is indestructible

except to fire but now it’s too green to burn.

What did the cattle do in this storm?

They stood with their butts toward the wind,

erect Buddhists waiting for nothing in particular.

I was in bed cringing at gusts,

imagining the contents of earth all blowing

north and piled up where the wind stopped,

the pile sky-high. No one can climb it.

A gopher comes out of a hole as if nothing happened.

4

The sun should be a couple of million miles

closer today. It wouldn’t hurt anything

and anyway this cold rainy June is hard

on me and the nesting birds. My own nest

is stupidly uncomfortable, the chair

of many years. The old windows don’t keep

the weather out, the wet wind whipping

my hair. A very old robin drops dead

on the lawn, a first for me. Millions

of birds die but we never see it—they like

privacy in this holy, fatal moment or so

I think. We can’t tell each other when we die.

Others must carry the message to and fro.

“He’s gone,” they’ll say, while writing an average poem

destined to disappear among the millions of poems

written now by mortally average poets.

5

Solstice at the cabin deep in the forest.

The full moon shines in the river, there are pale

green northern lights. A huge thunderstorm

comes slowly from the west. Lightning strikes

a nearby tamarack bursting into flame.

I go into the cabin feeling unworthy.

At dawn the tree is still smoldering

in this place the gods touched earth

Another Country

JIM HARRISON

I love these raw moist dawns with

a thousand birds you hear but can't

quite see in the mist.

My old alien body is a foreigner

struggling to get into another country.

The loon call makes me shiver.

Back at the cabin I see a book

and am not quite sure what that is.

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Mar 29, 2023Liked by Poetic Outlaws

I'm going to use this poem on a prayer card for my hard-lived, wildly poetic brother who just died.

He was a Viet Nam veteran....a sailor...a woodsman....an outlaw.

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One might think of a Harrison as just a loner who 'retreated to the natural world'. But he also collaborated with other writers, such as his beautiful poetic correspondence with Ted Kooser, published as Braided Creek. In the book there are no attributions so we don't know who wrote which poems. But sometimes it's not too hard to guess. Here's the first three. Any guesses?

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.

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Very generous. Thank you.

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Just stunning - to wake up and read this. He was always one of my faves. xSH

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A beautiful tribute. Love you stack! Thank you.

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I think I'm going to just head into that cabin in the woods with a roaring fire, shut myself in forever and read all these wonderful humans for the rest of my days...

Love your work here and the stuff you share so generously. Thanks

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Brown Dog. One of the most underrated works of literature to be found in any of the 50 states. Incredible that Legends of the Fall had only one word revised. He clearly had enormous confidence in his own writing.

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Cheers to an exquisite writer! Anthony Bourdain was correct, there will be none other like him...

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Wonderful. Thank you for that.

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Lovely. Thank you. I've never read his work but now I'll be looking out for it.

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Wonderful. Love Harrison.

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Growing to like this man's sensibilities more and more. I find his interest in Zen Buddhism curious and lovely, standing in stark contrast to Beats' showier version of the same spiritual practice.

Anyway. Blah blah from me. Lovely poem.

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Thank you all for introducing me to Jim Harrison. Perfectly Easter. Tears are allowed to flow. Love and beauty will prevail.

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This is such a profound piece and beautiful tribute!

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