Credentials

I have watched the river
Work its quiet craft
Through the snow.

I have laid beside two dogs
While they slept their way
Into death.

I have let children
Push me into the lake
Over and over.

I have failed
To save lives
But tried.

I have smoked cigars
Around a campfire
With good men.

I have acquired scars
Some visible, some not
Some earned, some gifts.

I have been awakened
By the splash of bears
Fishing at the dam.

I have spread the ashes
Of those
I love.

I have stayed up all night
In the company
Of poetry and whisky.

I have waited
For people to come home
Who did not.

I have smelled
The scent of apples
In the orchard breeze.

I have almost drowned
And have come very close
To being born.

I have been happily lost
In the woods
And in the bad part of town.

I have seen
The silence fall
Behind a woman's eyes.

I have watched the river
In the summer, too:
working, working at life.

In Memory of Jim Harrison

We bring the argument;
Pulled up from stubborn ash,
Rendered fully into flesh,
Flesh unto flesh,
Solid, warm, burning,
Tearing through the mesh
Refinement sends,
Made up of roots and coal,
Hard and hot;
The thingness of the soul.

To mediate the space:
The tugging trout,
The bear's black
Inquisitive nose,
The scent of cork
Purple with age,
Rosemary, sage,
The clang of kitchen things,
The beating of the owl's
Shadow enshrouded wings,
Pheasant, woodcock,
The robin's eggs,
The girl at the drive-in:
Her fine brown legs

In all this, oddly,
Peace;
The way out;
Or, perhaps, in;
Still presence
In the crazy fires
Of appetite;
All dreams revealed
In each wild part--
The spinning compass
Of the human heart