Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GEO-BESTIARY: 10, by JAMES HARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GEO-BESTIARY: 10, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: I know a private mountain range with a big bowl in its center that you
Last Line: Haven't quite found the words.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Nature; Poetry & Poets


I know a private mountain range with a big bowl in its center that you
find by following the narrowest creek bed, sometimes crawling until you
struggle through a thicket until you reach two large cupped hands of
stone in the middle of which is a hill, a promontory, which would be
called a mountain back home. There is iron in this hill and it sucks down
summer lightning, thousands and thousands of strokes through time, shattering
the gigantic top into a field of undramatic crystals that would bring
a buck a piece at a rock show. I was here in a dark time and stood there
and said, "I have put my poem in order on the threshold of my tongue,"
quoting someone from long, long ago, then got the hell off the mountain
due to tremors of undetermined source. Later that night sleeping under
an oak a swarm of elf owls (Micrathene whitneyi) descended to a half-dozen
feet above my head and a thousand white sycamores undulated in the full
moon, obviously the living souls of lightning strokes upside down along
the arroyo bed. A modern man, I do not make undue connections
though my heart wrenches daily against the unknowable, almighty throb
and heave of the universe against my skin that sings a song for which we
haven't quite found the words.





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