Dead Man's Float. Jim Harrison
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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
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