SOME LINES FROM JIM HARRISON

I found Jim Harrison’s Songs Of Unreason on my library app, and so many lines lit up for me. (It’s available on bookshop.org.) Lucky for him, he doesn’t have to comment on the era we are living through but I do sometimes wish he were still with us to get his punches in.

It is life’s work to recognize the mystery

in the obvious

“Poet Science”

In truth. each day is a universe in which

we are tangled in the light of stars.

“Horses”

I decided we were born to be moving water not ice.

“River 1”

Once on our nighttime farm on a moonlit walk

the clouds pushed by a big western wind

became a school whales swimming hard

across the cold heavens and I finally knew

that we walk the bottom of an ocean we call sky.

“River II”

We can’t imagine the rings of the bristlecone

that lived for millenia. We cut it down

to number the years like our own insolent birthdays.

“Ache”

I’ve read that some insects live only for minutes,

as we do in our implacable geologic time.

“Dan’s Bugs”

Everywhere

around me the birds are waiting

for the light. In this world of dreams

don’t let the clock cut up

your life in pieces.

“Rumination”

Life doesn’t strangle on ironies, we made

that part up.

“A Puzzle”

Today I saw two dead

pelicans. I heard they are shot because they eat

trout, crows shot because they eat duck eggs,

wolves shot for eating elk of for chasing

a bicyclist in Yellowstone. Should we be shot

for eating the world and giving back our puke?

“River VII”