“I hope to define my life, whatever is left, by migrations, south and north with the birds and far from the metallic fever of clocks, the self staring at the clock saying, “I must do this.” I can’t tell the time on the tongue of the river in the cool morning air, the smell of the ferment of greenery, the dust off the canyon’s rock walls, the swallows swooping above the scent of raw water.”
-Jim Harrison, In Search of Small Gods
FIELD NOTES #12
I mapped out the way to your room
in creaking floor boards and
groaning steps,
hands against the wall
until the whole house moved.
forgetting for a moment
any fear of the dark,
knowing that if I made it to
your room, I would be safe,
climb into your bed,
and forget all the monsters
hiding under mine.
𑁍𑁍𑁍
You think that after all these years
a train cutting through the night
would amount to nothing more than
white noise.
But here, the silence lulls you into
a false sense of safety and quickly
midnight trains turn into roaring
dragons.
𑁍𑁍𑁍
Heraclitus was right,
you never enter
the same river twice.
All the well-worn signs
(great red oaks,
rolling green hills,
snow-capped peaks,
rivers, reservoirs,
glaciers, and fjords)
only seem permanent
because ninety years
is all we know.
The ocean's full of mountains
who swore they'd never sink.