Brain and Bones
Jim Harrison is an author, a novelist, an anthologist, a screenwriter—but mostly, he’s a poet.
Shamefully, I must confess that while full of springtime ambition and whatever else is in that season that spurs us to grasp beyond our reach, I had intended to assemble a gaggle of poetry titles coincident with National Poetry Month—though that commemoration has about as much weight as National Lawn Trash Month and National Septic Tank Renewal Month—nonetheless, as Plato warned (sort of), poetry makes us do crazy things, thus I will periodically try to make up for my oversight.
Jim Harrison, who has authored more than 30 books (novels, novellas, an anthology of food writing, nonfiction, poetry, screenplays) sees himself foremost as a poet: “Poetry, there’s still a bit of the burning bush aspect of poetry descending on you, bang, you know? As they say, you never quite see it coming.” He has published 12 collections of poetry—his latest is In Search of Small Gods (Copper Canyon Press), which contains this gem:
“The Quarter” Maybe the problem is that I got involved with the wrong crowd of gods when I was seven. At first they weren’t harmful and only showed themselves as fish, birds, especially herons and loons, turtles, a bobcat and a small bear, but not deer and rabbits who only offered themselves as food. And maybe I spent too much time inside the water of lakes and rivers. Underwater seemed like the safest church I could go to. And sleeping outside that young might have seeped too much dark into my brain and bones. It was not for me to ever recover. The other day I found a quarter in the driveway I lost at the Mecosta County Fair in 1947 and missed out on five rides including the Ferris wheel and the Tilt-A-Whirl. I sat in anger for hours in the bull barn mourning my lost quarter on which the entire tragic history of earth is written. I looked up into the holes of the bulls’ massive noses and at the brass rings puncturing their noses which allowed them to be led. It would have been an easier life if I had allowed a ring in my nose, but so many years later I still find the spore of the gods here and there but never in the vicinity of quarters.
Spore of the gods, indeed.