May 2016
A native of Johnstown, NY, I've taught writing and literature and writing at Ripon College in Wisconsin since 1987. I've published six collections of poetry, including Stutter Monk and Second Wind; I also co-edited (with Kate Sontag) the essay anthology After Confession: Poetry as Confession. Essays, reviews, and individual poems have appeared widely, both in print and online. In recent years I've spent nearly as much time on photography as poetry. A gallery of my work is online here: http://instagram.com/doctorjazz
Editor's Note: In his submission letter to me, David wrote: ...for your May issue I’d like to try you on something else I’ve been working on for a while. It’s a series of poems I’ve been writing over the past couple years in honor of the late Jim Harrison. As you know, he’s long been an important poet for me. I like the fiction, but I truly love his poems. Anyway, each of my developing series of poems takes off from an idea or image taken from Harrison. While I am not intending to mimic his style per se, I’m sure some of that happens whether I wish it to or not. Eventually my hope is to build this series into something chapbook-size.
She
The humid summer night was warm as birth,
and she swam out into the night beyond the dock light.
—Jim Harrison, “She”
She crawls out into the dark lake
with long even strokes, a round moon
presiding, and for some reason
even mosquitoes are drowsy now,
can't be bothered to seek out
that lunar skin. Where I stand
shivering in the shallows, the silt
on my feet feels delicious, velvet
and fine. She's now just a head
silhouetted against black waters,
and soon just a voice low and rich.
I know she could swim all night,
as I know any invitation she gives
is not to me. Still I wade deeper,
cool water climbing my thighs
and up to my belly, and then
I spread my arms wide and fall
all the way across that moon-raked sky,
reaching once more for her voice.
Character Reference
I had to become the moving water I already am.
—Jim Harrison
Some people bother or scare my dog, some don't.
I can never predict it, often feeling shame's pinch
when the latest friendly soul bends down, croons,
and reaches out a gentle hand, only to have him
cringe and flinch, ears back, tail down, as if
my new pal had bared fangs and growled low
and mean. Others come on like rodeo clowns, waving
and whooping, but before I can yelp "He's really
shy!"—he's all over them, wiggling with joy, licking
their hands, prancing and leaping. I admit his
reactions can color mine. When he's unaccountably
wary, I'm apt to pause, searching the mold or rot
that may be spoiling some spot I can't yet see.
When he immediately loves some brash fool,
I tend to look for the sweet current that must run,
river-pure below its slushy, gray, much-tracked ice.
I guess some folks reflect any shift of sky like water,
and some stand like stones, but the ones to watch
are just moving on like the water they already are.
Birthdays of the Dead
Jim Harrison's advice: "Forget
the birthdays of the dead." Well,
like all advice it's probably wrong,
even if correct. Even minor celebrities
gaze into their own mirrors, just like
you and me. Drop a black pebble
down a deep well and then sit back
to listen for the applause. It will sound
like wind in the pines, a pot of water
boiling, someone crumpling paper
into a ball and launching it like
the most pitiful moon. I don't take
advice from one-eyed old fat men,
but in truth I seldom take counsel
even from my own steaming mirror,
where a myopic, portly old fool
the color of dust peeks through
and into the new day's blur and shine.
The Crow from Home
It is the crow from home
that cawed above the immense
gaunt bear eating sweet pea vines
and wild strawberries.
—Jim Harrison, "Time Suite"
In morning's maple it is the crow
from home, hunched cackling
on a bare branch as usual,
all disdain and dismissal
just as in 1963, when I labored
up the drive in my snow suit,
a laughable puff of nothing
yet utterly earthbound, sweaty
and pale. And silhouetted
atop a flagless pole as dusk rose
like a river over the deserted
playing fields of Hanover, NH
in 1974, where I walked
and walked my mind blank
as the snowy streets. I knew
that crow also. Same shape
perched on a nearby tombstone
when I poured ashes into
a fresh hole in 2001—not even
an omen, just a torn-off scrap
of night on morning's lawn.
That black shape also crossed
in front of my car when I drove
down Switzer Hill one last time,
fishtailing, going too fast
in the freezing rain, yet it seems
we both made it from dark
to dark. Whether bent over
road kill, picking scraps from
the dumpster, flying alone
at twilight over a bare corn field,
that crow from home finally
has nothing in its beak
but the sound of a rusty
door-hinge in the wind, and
nothing to do but swoop low
over me as if in attack,
then up to a roadside pine
landing light as a shadow.
Any Lesson
We are here
to be curious not consoled.
—Jim Harrison, "The Golden Window"
I love that look
the doe gives me
before lifting tail
and bolting: what
on earth is this?
I don't know,
cousin, but the best
days are those
when we both
go completely
still, just gazing
at each other
for a long moment.
It empties me
of any lesson.
The humid summer night was warm as birth,
and she swam out into the night beyond the dock light.
—Jim Harrison, “She”
She crawls out into the dark lake
with long even strokes, a round moon
presiding, and for some reason
even mosquitoes are drowsy now,
can't be bothered to seek out
that lunar skin. Where I stand
shivering in the shallows, the silt
on my feet feels delicious, velvet
and fine. She's now just a head
silhouetted against black waters,
and soon just a voice low and rich.
I know she could swim all night,
as I know any invitation she gives
is not to me. Still I wade deeper,
cool water climbing my thighs
and up to my belly, and then
I spread my arms wide and fall
all the way across that moon-raked sky,
reaching once more for her voice.
Character Reference
I had to become the moving water I already am.
—Jim Harrison
Some people bother or scare my dog, some don't.
I can never predict it, often feeling shame's pinch
when the latest friendly soul bends down, croons,
and reaches out a gentle hand, only to have him
cringe and flinch, ears back, tail down, as if
my new pal had bared fangs and growled low
and mean. Others come on like rodeo clowns, waving
and whooping, but before I can yelp "He's really
shy!"—he's all over them, wiggling with joy, licking
their hands, prancing and leaping. I admit his
reactions can color mine. When he's unaccountably
wary, I'm apt to pause, searching the mold or rot
that may be spoiling some spot I can't yet see.
When he immediately loves some brash fool,
I tend to look for the sweet current that must run,
river-pure below its slushy, gray, much-tracked ice.
I guess some folks reflect any shift of sky like water,
and some stand like stones, but the ones to watch
are just moving on like the water they already are.
Birthdays of the Dead
Jim Harrison's advice: "Forget
the birthdays of the dead." Well,
like all advice it's probably wrong,
even if correct. Even minor celebrities
gaze into their own mirrors, just like
you and me. Drop a black pebble
down a deep well and then sit back
to listen for the applause. It will sound
like wind in the pines, a pot of water
boiling, someone crumpling paper
into a ball and launching it like
the most pitiful moon. I don't take
advice from one-eyed old fat men,
but in truth I seldom take counsel
even from my own steaming mirror,
where a myopic, portly old fool
the color of dust peeks through
and into the new day's blur and shine.
The Crow from Home
It is the crow from home
that cawed above the immense
gaunt bear eating sweet pea vines
and wild strawberries.
—Jim Harrison, "Time Suite"
In morning's maple it is the crow
from home, hunched cackling
on a bare branch as usual,
all disdain and dismissal
just as in 1963, when I labored
up the drive in my snow suit,
a laughable puff of nothing
yet utterly earthbound, sweaty
and pale. And silhouetted
atop a flagless pole as dusk rose
like a river over the deserted
playing fields of Hanover, NH
in 1974, where I walked
and walked my mind blank
as the snowy streets. I knew
that crow also. Same shape
perched on a nearby tombstone
when I poured ashes into
a fresh hole in 2001—not even
an omen, just a torn-off scrap
of night on morning's lawn.
That black shape also crossed
in front of my car when I drove
down Switzer Hill one last time,
fishtailing, going too fast
in the freezing rain, yet it seems
we both made it from dark
to dark. Whether bent over
road kill, picking scraps from
the dumpster, flying alone
at twilight over a bare corn field,
that crow from home finally
has nothing in its beak
but the sound of a rusty
door-hinge in the wind, and
nothing to do but swoop low
over me as if in attack,
then up to a roadside pine
landing light as a shadow.
Any Lesson
We are here
to be curious not consoled.
—Jim Harrison, "The Golden Window"
I love that look
the doe gives me
before lifting tail
and bolting: what
on earth is this?
I don't know,
cousin, but the best
days are those
when we both
go completely
still, just gazing
at each other
for a long moment.
It empties me
of any lesson.
©2016 David Graham