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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE IDEA OF BALANCE IS TO BE FOUND IN HERONS AND LOONS, by JAMES HARRISON Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: I just heard a loon call on a t.V. Ad Last Line: Within their breasts. Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim Subject(s): Environment; Nature; Solitude; Environmental Protection; Ecology; Conservation; Loneliness | |||
I just heard a loon-call on a TV ad and my body gave itself a quite voluntary shudder, as in the night in East Africa I heard the immense barking cough of a lion, so foreign and indifferent. But the lion drifts away and the loon stays close, calling, as she did in my childhood, in the cold rain a song that tells the world of men to keep its distance. It isn't the signal of another life or the reminder of anything except her call: still, at this quiet point past midnight the rain is the same rain that fell so long ago, and the loon says I'm seven years old again. At the far ends of the lake where no one lives or visits -- there are no roads to get there; you take the watercourse way, the quiet drip and drizzle of oars, slight squeak of oarlock, the bare feet can feel the cold water move beneath the old wood boat. At one end the lordly great blue herons nest at the top of the white pine; at the other end the loons, just after daylight in cream-colored mist, drifting with wails that begin as querulous, rising then into the spheres in volume, with lost or doomed angels imprisoned within their breasts. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IN ABEYANCE by DENISE LEVERTOV IN A VACANT HOUSE by PHILIP LEVINE SUNDAY ALONE IN A FIFTH FLOOR APARTMENT, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS by WILLIAM MATTHEWS SILENCE LIKE COOL SAND by PAT MORA THE HONEY BEAR by EILEEN MYLES A DOMESTIC POEM FOR PORTIA by JAMES HARRISON |
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