REVERSE PRAYER ~

J I M     H A R R I S O N

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?



_____________

JIM HARRISON
Dead Man's Float
Copper Canyon Press
2016 


 




 

DAYS ALONE ~

Visitors

The river for weeks is low

Visitors arrive

Call it a creek

We know better

Say nothing

Next month in a downpour

Bridges wash out

Trees go down

Days of mud

No one visits

Walking From Town Between
Midnight and 4 A.M.

I must have carried out

Every peeper in this valley

Home with me, 13 miles

Trees shiver in light rain

The moon following the

Fences following­

A hillside of fog lies down

Generously in an apple orchard

Here is where a few sheep

Suddenly break into a run

A horse pounds the night

Meeting you at barbed wire

What is the sound between us

It is water that has brought me back

Winter

Just before supper

I watched a storm draw in

Taking light

The trees toss

No matter

I have finished carrying

Elm from the edge of the woods

Bucked, split then stacked

I am done

Well used

Come snow

 

______________ 

Bob Arnold

Where Rivers Meet

Mad River Press