Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GATHERING APRIL; FOR SIMIC, by JAMES HARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GATHERING APRIL; FOR SIMIC, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Stuffing a crow call in one ear
Last Line: In the shadow of each fence post.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): April


Stuffing a crow call in one ear
and an unknown bird's in the other,
lying on the warm cellar door out of
the cool wind which I take small sparing
bites of with three toes still wet from the pond's
edge: April is so violent up here you hide
in corners or, when in the woods, in swales
and behind beech trees. Twenty years ago
this April I offered my stupid heart up to
this bloody voyage. It was near a marsh
on a long walk. You can't get rid of those
thousand pointless bottles of whiskey
that you brought along. Last night after
the poker game I read Obata's Li Po.
He was no less a fool but adding those
twenty thousand poems you come up
with a god. There are patents on all
the forms of cancer but still we praise
god from whom or which all blessings flow:
that an April exists, that a body lays itself
down on a warm cellar door and remembers, drinks
in birds and wind, whiskey, frog songs
from the marsh, the little dooms hiding
in the shadow of each fence post.





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