Classic and Contemporary Poetry
NOT WRITING MY NAME, by JAMES HARRISON Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: In the snow, that is. The 'j' could have been Last Line: I have become the place the crow didn't appear. Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim Subject(s): Snow; Winter; Writing & Writers | ||||||||
In the snow, that is. The "J" could have been three hundred yards into the high pasture across the road. The same with the "I" which I intended to dot by sprawling and flopping in a drift. The "M" naturally would have required something more than twelve hundred yards of hard walking as we have two empty-bottomed isosceleses to deal with. What star-crossed jock ego would churn through those drifts to write a name invisible except to crows? And the dog would have confused the crows the way he first runs ahead, then crisscrosses my path. It's too cold anyhow - ten below at noon though the sun would tell me otherwise. And the wind whips coils and wisps of snow across the hardened drifts and around my feet like huge ghost snakes. These other signatures: Vole tracks so light I have to kneel to trace his circlings which are his name. Vole. And an unknown bird, scarcely heavier than the vole, that lacks a left foot. Fox tracks leading up a drift onto my favorite boulder where he swished his tail, definitely peed, and left. The dog sniffs the tracks, also pees but sparingly. He might need it later, he saves his messages. For a moment mastodons float through the trees, thunderhead colored, stuffing their maws with branches. This place used to be Africa. Now it's so cold there are blue shadows in my footprints, and a blue-shadow dog runs next to my own, flat and rippling to the snow, less than paper thick. I try to invoke a crow for company; none appears. I have become the place the crow didn't appear. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE CELL, SELECTION by LYN HEJINIAN OXOTA: A SHORT RUSSIAN NOVEL: CHAPTER 126: THE DOUBTING MAN by LYN HEJINIAN WAKING THE MORNING DREAMLESS AFTER LONG SLEEP by JANE HIRSHFIELD COMPULSIVE QUALIFICATIONS by RICHARD HOWARD DEUTSCH DURCH FREUD by RANDALL JARRELL LET THEM ALONE by ROBINSON JEFFERS ON BUILDING WITH STONE by ROBINSON JEFFERS THE IDEA OF BALANCE IS TO BE FOUND IN HERONS AND LOONS by JAMES HARRISON |
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