Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE SIGN: 2, by JAMES HARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE SIGN: 2, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: But often at night something asks
Last Line: And the snake coiled bleeding at its center.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Dreams; Night; Nightmares; Bedtime


But often at night something asks
the brain to ride, run riderless;
plumed night swirling, brain riding itself
through blackness, crazed with motion,
footless against the earth,
perhaps hooves imagined in lunacy;
through swamps feared even in daytime
at gallop, crashing through poplar
thickets, tamarack, pools of green slime,
withers splattered with mud, breathing
deep in an open marsh in the center of
the great swamp, then running again
toward a knoll of cedar where deer feed,
pausing, stringing the bow, chasing
the deer for miles, crossing a blacktop road
where the hooves clatter.

̺ ̺ ̺

On a May night walking home from a tavern
through a village with only three streetlights,
a slip of moon and still air moist with scent of first grass;
to look into the blackness by the roadside,
and in all directions, village, forest,
and field covered with it:
eighteen miles of black to Traverse City
thirteen miles of black to Buckley
nineteen miles of black to Karlin
twelve miles of black to Walton Junction

̺ ̺ ̺

And infinite black above;
earth herself a heavy whirling ball of pitch.
If the brain expands to cover these distances...
stumbling to the porch where the cat
has left an injured snake that hisses with the brain,
the brain rearing up to shed the black
and the snake coiled bleeding at its center.





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