Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WHAT HE SAID WHEN I WAS ELEVEN, by JAMES HARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WHAT HE SAID WHEN I WAS ELEVEN, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: August, a dense heat wave at the cabin
Last Line: That's what he said forty years ago.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Memory


August, a dense heat wave at the cabin
mixed with torrents of rain,
the two-tracks become miniature rivers.

In the Russian Orthodox Church
one does not talk to God, one sings.
This empty and sun-blasted land

has a voice rising in shimmers.
I did not sing in Moscow
but St. Basil's in Leningrad raised

a quiet tune. But now seven worlds
away I hang the cazas-moscas
from the ceiling and catch seven flies

in the first hour, buzzing madly
against the stickiness. I've never seen
the scissor-tailed flycatcher, a favorite

bird of my youth, the worn Audubon
card pinned to the wall. When I miss
flies three times with the swatter

they go free for good. Fair is fair.
There is too much nature pressing against
the window as if it were a green night;

and the river swirling in glazed turbulence
is less friendly than ever before.
Forty years ago she called, Come home, come home,

it's suppertime. I was fishing a fishless
cattle pond with a new three-dollar pole,
dreaming the dark blue ocean of pictures.

In the barn I threw down hay
while my Swede grandpa finished milking,
squirting the barn cat's mouth with an udder.

I kissed the wet nose of my favorite cow,
drank a dipper of fresh warm milk
and carried two pails to the house,

scraping the manure off my feet
in the pump shed. She poured the milk
in the cream separator and I began cranking.

At supper the oilcloth was decorated
with worn pink roses. We ate cold herring,
also the bluegills we had caught at daylight.

The fly-strip above the table idled in
the window's breeze, a new fly in its death buzz.
Grandpa said, "We are all flies."

That's what he said forty years ago.





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