The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems

  A lovely woman in Minnesota owned a 100-year-old horse, 378

  A / quarter horse, no rider, 38

  A scenario: I’m the Star, Lauren, Faye, Ali, little stars, 164

  A whiff of that dead bird along the trail, 443

  After the “invitation” by the preacher she collapsed in the, 177

  After the passing of irresistible, 352

  After thirty years of work, 363

  Ah, yes. Fame never got anyone, 288

  Aieeee was said in a blip the size of an ostrich egg, 182

  All of those little five-dollar-a-week rooms smelling thick of, 209

  All those girls dead in the war from misplaced or aimed, 160

  Amid pale green milkweed, wild clover, 46

  An afterthought to my previous note; we must closely watch any self-, 221

  Anconcito. The fisheater. Men were standing on cork rafts, 228

  As a child, fresh out of the hospital, 356

  As a geezer one grows tired of the story, 432

  At dawn I squat on the garage, 45

  At 8:12 AM all of the watches in the world are being wound, 227

  At Hard Luck Ranch the tea is hot, 365

  At the strip club in Lincoln, Nebraska, 366

  August, a dense heat wave at the cabin, 341

  Awake: / the white hand of, 44

  Bear died standing up, 394

  Behind my back I have returned to life with much more surprise, 213

  Beware, o wanderer, the road is walking too, 374

  Come down to earth! Get your head out of your ass!, 372

  Concha is perhaps seven, 433

  Coyote’s bloody face makes me, 452

  Dear friend. It rained long and hard after a hot week and when I, 220

  Death thou comest when I had thee least in mind, said Everyman, 203

  Deep in the forest there is a pond, 89

  Dog, the lightning frightened us, dark house and both of us, 176

  Down in the bone myth of the cellar, 345

  Driving east on buddha’s birthday, 283

  Dusk over the lake, 31

  Dust followed our car like a dry brown cloud, 32

  Every year, when we’re fly-fishing for tarpon, 336

  Everywhere I go I study the scars on earth’s face, 373

  First memory, 278

  For my horse, Brotherinlaw, who had no character, 157

  For my mentor, long dead, Richard Halliburton, 338

  For the first time / far in the distance, 396

  For the first time the wind, 281

  Form is the woods: the beast, 9

  From the roof the night’s the color, 83

  Fruit and butter. She smelled like the skin of an apple, 202

  Ghazal in fear there might not be another, 171

  Go, my songs, 30

  Go to sleep. Night is a coal pit, 79

  God I am cold and want to go to sleep for a long time, 184

  Going in the bar last Sunday night I noticed that they were having, 222

  Great-uncle Wilhelm, Mennonite, patriarch, 21

  Hammering & drifting. Sea wrack. Cast upon & cast out, 293

  He climbed the ladder looking over the wall at the party, 190

  He Halts. He Haw. Plummets, 111

  He is young. The father is dead, 12

  He said the grizzly sat eating the sheep and when the bullet, 137

  He sings from the bottom of a well but she can hear him up, 149

  He thinks of the dead. But they, 27

  He waits to happen with the clear, 33

  Hear this touch: grass parts, 13

  Home again. It looked different for a moment, 375

  Hotei didn’t need a zafu, 326

  How can I be alone when these brain cells, 448

  How heavy I am. My feet sink into the ground and my knees, 411

  How long, stone, did it take, 43

  How much better these actual dreams, 449

  How the love of Tarzan in Africa haunted my childhood, 451

  I am four years older than you but scarcely an unwobbling, 200

  I am walked on a leash by my dog and am water, 158

  I can hear the cow dogs sleeping, 419

  I cleaned the granary dust off your photo with my shirtsleeve, 204

  I confess that here and there in my life, 370

  I couldn’t walk across that bridge in Hannibal, 159

  I don’t have any medals. I feel their lack, 198

  I forgot to say that at the moment of death Yesenin, 397

  I have to kill the rooster tomorrow. He’s being an asshole, 279

  I haven’t accepted the fact that I’ll never understand, 372

  I hedge when I say “my farm,” 427

  I imagined her dead, killed by some local maniac who, 151

  I just heard a loon-call on a TV ad, 353

  I know a private mountain range, 428

  I load my own shells and have a suitcase of pressed, 130

  I once thought that life’s what’s left over after, 379

  I sat on a log fallen over a river and heard, 438

  I shall commit suicide or die, 297

  I think of the twenty thousand poems of Li Po, 40

  I think that night’s our balance, 55

  I thought it was night but found out the windows were painted, 185

  I told the dark-haired girl to come down out of the apple, 146

  I traded a girl, 119

  I walked the same circular path today, 420

  I want a sign, a heraldic bird, or even an angel at midnight, 155

  I want to be worthy of this waking dream, 231

  I want to bother you with some recent nonsense; a classmate dropped, 219

  I want to die in the saddle. An enemy of civilization, 122

  I wanted to feel exalted so I picked up, 199

  I was commanded, in a dream naturally, 436

  I was commissioned in a dream by Imanja, 337

  I was hoping to travel the world, 430

  I was lucky enough to have invented a liquid heart, 180

  I was proud at four that my father called me Little Turd of Misery, 208

  I was sent far from my land of bears, 435

  I was walking because I wasn’t upstairs sitting, 294

  I went to Tucson and it gave, 367

  I will walk down to a marina, 327

  I won my wings! I got all A’s! We bought fresh fruit! The toilet, 223

  If I’m not mistaken, everyone seems to go back, 378

  If that bald head gets you closer to Buddha, 372

  If you laid out all the limbs from the Civil War hospital, 167

  If you love me drink this discolored wine, 60

  If you were less of a vowel or had a full stop in your, 168

  Imagine being a dog and never knowing what you’re doing. You’re, 210

  In Montana the badger looks at me in fear, 445

  In the best sense, 343

  In the Cabeza Prieta from a hillock I saw no human sign, 440

  In the end you are tired of those places, 99

  In the hotel room (far above the city) I said I bet you, 156

  In the next installment I’ll give you Crazy Horse and Anne Frank, 374

  In the pasture a shire, 28

  In the snow, that is. The “J” could have been, 277

  Inside people fear the outside; outside, the in, 375

  It certainly wasn’t fish who discovered water, 369

  It is an hour before dawn and even prophets sleep, 144

  It is difficult to imagine the wordless conversations, 371

  It is the lamp on the kitchen table, 292

  It was Monday morning for most of the world, 377

  It wasn’t until the sixth century that the Christians, 373

  It would surely be known for years after as the day I shot, 206

  I’ve emerged from the seven-going-on-eight divorces, 380

  I’ve known her too long, 14

  I’ve w
asted too much moonlight, 363

  Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, I sang in Sunday, 377

  Just before dark, 383

  Just like today eternity is accomplished, 369

  Just seven weeks ago in Paris, 384

  Li Ho of the province of Honan, 47

  “Life’s too short to be a whore anymore,” 441

  Limp with night fears: hellebore, wolfsbane, 123

  Lin-chi says, having thrown away your head so long, 371

  Looking at a big moon too long, 399

  Lustra. Officially the cold comes from Manitoba, 201

  Man’s not a singing animal, 39

  Many a sharp-eyed pilot has noticed, 426

  Maps. Maps. Maps. Venezuela, Keewanaw, Iceland open up, 150

  March 5: first day without a fire, 331

  Mind follow the nose, 90

  More lion prints in our creek bed, 368

  My favorite stump straddles a gully a dozen, 434

  My left eye is blind and jogs like, 10

  My soul grew weak and polluted during captivity, 442

  My zabuton doubles as a dog bed. Rose sleeps, 368

  Naturally we would prefer seven epiphanies a day and an earth, 215

  Near a brown river with carp no doubt pressing their, 132

  New Matrices, all ice. Fixed here and solidly, 232

  New music might, that sucks men down in howls, 170

  No tranquil pills this year wanting to live peeled as they, 207

  Not a new poem for Helen, 75

  Not here and now but now and here, 366

  Not how many different birds I’ve seen, 453

  Not those who have lived here and gone, 87

  Nothing is the same to anyone, 299

  Now changed. None come to Carthage. No cauldrons, all love, 134

  Now this paste of ash and water, 85

  O Atlanta, roseate dawn, the clodhoppers, hillbillies, rednecks, 145

  O BLM, BLM, and NFS, 424

  O happy day! Said overpowered, had by it all and transfixed, 153

  O she buzzed in my ear “I love you” and I dug at, 174

  O that girl, only young men, 425

  O to use the word wingéd as in bird or victory or airplane for, 224

  O triple sob – turned forty, 282

  O well, it was the night of the terrible jackhammer, 191

  Of the hundred swans in West Bay, 84

  On the fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost I rose early, 187

  On this back road the land, 16

  Once and for all there’s no genetic virtue, 378

  Once and for all to hear, I’m not going to shoot anybody, 166

  Once I saw a wolf tread a circle in his cage, 26

  One part of the brain attacks another, 364

  Our minds buzz like bees, 363

  Our pup is gravely ill, 365

  Out in an oak-lined field down the road, 369

  Overlooking the Mississippi, 381

  Peach sky, 413

  Poor little blind boy lost in the storm, 365

  Praise me at Durkheim Fair where I’ve never been, hurling, 138

  Returning at night, 18

  Rich folks keep their teeth, 348

  Sam got tired of the way life fudged the big issues, 379

  Says Borges in Ficciones, “I’m in hell.

  I’m dead,” and the dark, 140

  Says he, “Ah Edward I too have a dark past of manual labor,” 135

  She called from Sundance, Wyoming, and said the posse had, 188

  She / pulls the sheet of this dance, 247

  She said in LA of course that she’d be reincarnated as an Indian princess, 446

  Shoju sat all night in the graveyard, 364

  Six days of clouds since, 290

  Sleeping from Mandan to Jamestown, 295

  Some eco-ninny released, 422

  Some sort of rag of pure language, no dictums but a bell, 148

  Someone is screaming almost in Morse, 120

  Sometimes a toothpick is the most important thing, 376

  Song, / angry bush, 22

  Song for Nat King Cole and the dog who ate the baby, 169

  Song, I am unused to you, 48

  Spring: despondency, 286

  Standing at the window at night, 37

  Stuffing a crow call in one ear, 296

  Sunday, with two weeks of heat lifting from us in a light rain, 412

  Talked to the God of Hosts about the Native American, 370

  Ten thousand pointless equations left just after dawn, 373

  That dew-wet glistening wild iris, 421

  That great tree covered with snow, 34

  That heartless finch, botulinal. An official wheeze passes through, 142

  That her left foot is smaller if only slightly, 161

  That hot desert beach in Ecuador, 330

  That the housefly is guided in flight by a fly brain diminishes, 192

  That’s a dark trough we’d hide in. Said his, 172

  The alfalfa was sweet and damp in fields where shepherds, 131

  The blond girl, 346

  The boots were on the couch and had, 121

  The boy stood in the burning house.

  Set it up, 234

  The brain opens the hand which touches that spot, clinically, 139

  The child crawls in widening circles, backs to the wall, 183

  The clouds swirling low past the house and, 175

  The color of a poppy and bruised, the subalpine green that, 136

  The dawn of the day we arrived, Abel Murrietta, 376

  The earth is almost round. The seas, 86

  The four seasons, the ten oaths, the nine colors, three vowels, 371

  The girl’s bottom is beautiful as Peacock’s dancing bear, 377

  The hound I’ve known for three years, 366

  The last and I’m shrinking from the coldness of your spirit: that, 226

  The little bull calf gets his soft pink, 423

  The mad have black roots in their brains, 80

  The masques of dream – monk in his, 287

  The mirror tastes him, 20

  The monk is eighty-seven. There’s no fat, 370

  The mushrooms helped again: walking hangdoggedly to the granary, 216

  The night is thin and watery; fish in the air, 141

  The resplendent female “elegant trogon,” 444

  The rising sun not beet, 391

  The rivers of my life, 303

  The soul of water. The most involved play. She wonders if she, 211

  The sound of the dog’s pawsteps move away, 376

  The sun had shrunk to a dime, 82

  The sun’s warm against the slats of the granary, 49

  The wallet is as big as earth, 447

  The wars: we’re drawn to them, 70

  The well pit is beneath where the pump shed burned, 363

  The world is wrenched on her pivot, shivering. Politicians, 375

  There are no calls from the outside, 285

  There are no magic numbers or magic lives, 65

  There was a peculiar faint light from low in the east, 193

  There’s something I’ve never known, 355

  These corners that stick out and catch on things, 181

  These last few notes to you have been a bit somber like biographies, 218

  These losses are final – you walked out of the grape arbor, 186

  These simple rules to live within – a black, 328

  Things to paint, 284

  This adobe is no protection against the flossy, 370

  This amber light floating strangely upward in the woods – nearly, 152

  This bronze ring punctures, 41

  This is all it is, 229

  This is cold salt, 35

  This matted and glossy photo of Yesenin, 197

  This morning I felt strong and jaunty in my mail-order, 379

  This nadir: the wet hole, 92

  This other speaks of bones, blood-wet, 19
r />   This song stays, 91

  Through the blinds, 29

  Thus the poet is a beached gypsy, the first porpoise to whom it, 214

  Time eats us alive, 364

  Time gets foreshortened late at night, 368

  To answer some of the questions you might ask were you alive and, 217

  To move into it again, as it was, 88

  Today the warblers undulate, 429

  Today we’ve moved back to the granary again and I’ve anointed, 212

  Took my own life because I was permanently crippled, 380

  Trees die of thirst or cold, 36

  Try as you might there’s nothing, 431

  Unbind my hair, she says. The night is white and warm, 129

  Unwearied / the coo and choke, 42

  Up at the Hard Luck Ranch, 367

  Walking back on a chill morning past Kilmer’s Lake, 53

  Walking the lakeshore at first moonlight I can see, 374

  Way up a sandy draw in the foothills, 367

  We were much saddened by Bill Knott’s death, 147

  We’re nearing the end of this homage that often resembles a, 225

  What are these nightmares, 335

  What happens when the god of spring, 289

  What if I own more paper clips than I’ll ever use in this, 205

  What if it were our privilege, 334

  What in coils works with riddle’s logic, Riemann’s, 173

  What will I do with seven billion cubic feet of clouds, 154

  When she dried herself on the dock a drop of water, 163

  When she walked on her hands and knees in the Arab, 162

  Who could knock at this door left open, repeat, 165

  Who could put anything together that would stay in one place, 179

  Who is it up to if it isn’t up to you, 439

  Who remembers Wang Chi, “the real human like, 374

  Why did this sheep die? The legs are thin, stomach hugely, 143

  With each shot, 364

  With these dire portents, 340

  Wondering what this new light is, before he died he walked, 189

  Yes yes yes it was the year of the tall ships, 133

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jim Harrison is the author of twenty books, numerous screenplays, and served for several years as the food columnist for Esquire magazine. His work has been translated into twenty-two languages and produced as four feature-length films. As a young poet he co-edited Sumac magazine and earned a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Mr. Harrison divides his time between northern Michigan and southern Arizona.

  BOOKS BY JIM HARRISON

  Poetry

  Plain Song

  Locations

  Outlyer & Ghazals

  Letters to Yesenin