Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GEO-BESTIARY: 27, by JAMES HARRISON


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GEO-BESTIARY: 27, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: She said in la of course that she'd be reincarnated as an indian princess
Last Line: Thought as lovely as april's sycamore.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Reincarnation; Transmigration; Pretas


She said in LA of course that she'd be reincarnated as an Indian princess,
and I tried to recall any Lakota or Anishinabe princesses. I said how about
wheat berries, flakes of granite on a mountainside, a green leaf beginning
to dry out one the ground, a microbe within a dog turd, the windfall apple
no one finds, an ordinary hawk fledgling hitting a high-tension wire,
apricot blossoms from that old fallow tree? Less can be more she agreed.
It might be nice to try something else, say a tree that only gets to dance
if the wind comes up but I refuse to believe this lettuce might be
Grandma - more likely the steak that they don't serve here. We go from
flesh to flesh, she thought, with her nose ring and tongue tack, inscrutable
to me but doubtless genetic. There is no lesser flesh whether it grows
feathers or fur, scales or hairy skin. The coyote wishes to climb the
moonbeam she cannot be, the wounded raven to stay in the cloud forever.
Whatever we are we don't quite know it, waiting for a single
thought as lovely as April's sycamore.





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