Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SUITE TO FATHERS: 3, by JAMES HARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SUITE TO FATHERS: 3, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Once in nevada I sat on a boulder at twilight
Last Line: Night stares down with her great bruised eye.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Death; Ghosts; Night; Supernatural; Dead, The; Bedtime


Once in Nevada I sat on a boulder at twilight -
I had no ride and wanted to avoid the snakes.
I watched the full moon rise a fleshy red
out of the mountains, out of a distant sandstorm.
I thought then if I might travel deep enough
I might embrace the dead as equals,
not in their separate stillness as dead, but in music
one with another's harmonies.
The moon became paler,
rising, floating upward in her arc
and I with her, intermingled in her whiteness,
until at dawn again she bloodied
herself with earth.

̺ ̺ ̺

In the beginning I trusted in spirits,
slight things, those of the dead in procession,
the household gods in mild delirium
with their sweet round music and modest feasts.
Now I listen only to that hard black core,
a ball harsh as coal, rending for light
far back in my own sour brain.

̺ ̺ ̺

The tongue knots itself
a cramped fist of music,
the oracle a white-walled room of bone
that darkens now with a greater dark;
and the brain a glacier of blood,
inching forward, sliding, the bottom
silt covered but sweet,
becoming a river now
laving the skull with coolness -
the leaves on her surface
dipping against the bone.

̺ ̺ ̺

Voyager, the self the voyage -
dark, let me open your lids.
Night stares down with her great bruised eye.





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