Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FEBRUARY SUITE, by JAMES HARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FEBRUARY SUITE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Song, / angry bush
Last Line: A long year has gone.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Memory; Seasons; Time; Winter


Song,
angry bush
with the thrust of your roots
deep in this icy ground,
is there a polar sun?

̺ ̺ ̺

Month of the frozen
goat -
La Roberta says cultivate
new friends,

profit will
be yours with patience.
Not that stars are crossed
or light to be restored -
we die from want of velocity.

And you, longest of months
with your false springs,
you don't help or care about helping,
so splendidly ignorant of us.
Today icicles fell
but they will build downward again.

̺ ̺ ̺

Who has a "fate"?
This fig tree
talks
about bad weather.

̺ ̺ ̺

Here is a man drunk --
in the glass
his blurred innocence renewed.

̺ ̺ ̺

The Great Leitzel
before falling to her death
did 249 flanges on the Roman rings --
her wrist was often raw
and bloody
but she kept it hidden.

̺ ̺ ̺

He remembers Memorial Day --
the mother's hymn to Generals.
The American Legion fires blanks
out over the lassitude of the cemetery
in memory of sons who broke
like lightbulbs in a hoarse cry
of dust.

̺ ̺ ̺

Now
behind bone
in the perfect dark
the dream of animals.

̺ ̺ ̺

To remember
the soft bellies of fish
the furred animals that were part of your youth
not for their novelty
but as fellow creatures.

̺ ̺ ̺

I look at the rifles
in their rack upon the wall:
though I know the Wars
only as history
some cellar in Europe might still
owe some of its moistness to blood.

̺ ̺ ̺

With my head on the table
I write,
my arm outstretched, in another field
of richer grain.

̺ ̺ ̺

A red-haired doll stares
at me from a highchair,
her small pink limbs twisted about
her neck.
I salute the postures of women.

̺ ̺ ̺

This hammer of joy,
this is no fist
but a wonderment got by cunning.

The first thunderstorm
of March came last night
and when I awoke the snow had passed
away, the brown grass
lay matted and pubic.

Between the snow and grass,
somewhere into the ground with the rain
a long year has gone.





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