Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GEO-BESTIARY: 16, by JAMES HARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GEO-BESTIARY: 16, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: My favorite stump straddles a gully a dozen
Last Line: The two million years I actually am.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Nature


My favorite stump straddles a gully a dozen
miles from any human habitation.
My eschatology includes scats, animal poop,
scatology so that when I nestle under this stump
out of the rain I see the scats of bear, bobcat,
coyote. I won't say that I feel at home
under this vast white pine stump, the roots
spread around me, so large in places no arms
can encircle them, as if you were under the body
of a mythic spider, the thunder ratcheting
the sky so that the earth hums beneath you.
Here is a place to think about nothing,
which is what I do. If the rain beats down
hard enough tiny creeks form beside my shit-strewn
pile of sand. The coyote has been eating mice,
the bear berries, the bobcat a rabbit. It's dry
enough so it doesn't smell except for ancient
wet wood and gravel, pine pitch, needles. Luckily
a sandhill crane nests nearby so that in June
if I doze I'm awakened by her cracked
and prehistoric cry, waking startled, feeling
the two million years I actually am.





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