Classic and Contemporary Poetry
WALKING, by JAMES HARRISON Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Walking back on a chill morning past kilmer's lake Last Line: Dark endless weight of water. Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim Subject(s): Hunting; Nature; Walking; Water; Hunters | ||||||||
Walking back on a chill morning past Kilmer's Lake into the first broad gully, down its trough and over a ridge of poplar, scrub oak, and into a larger gully, walking into the slow fresh warmth of midmorning to Spider Lake where I drank at a small spring remembered from ten years back; walking northwest two miles where another gully opened, seeing a stump on a knoll where my father stood one deer season, and tiring of sleet and cold burned a pine stump, the snow gathering fire-orange on a dull day; walking past charred stumps blackened by the '81 fire to a great hollow stump near a basswood swale - I sat within it on a November morning watching deer browse beyond my young range of shotgun and slug, chest beating hard for killing - into the edge of a swale waist-high with ferns, seeing the quick movement of a blue racer, and thick curl of the snake against a birch log, a pale blue with nothing of the sky in it, a fleshy blue, blue of knotted veins in an arm; walking to Savage's Lake where I ate my bread and cheese, drank cool lake water, and slept for a while, dreaming of fire, snake and fish and women in white linen walking, pinkish warm limbs beneath white linen; then walking, walking homeward toward Well's Lake, brain at boil now with heat, afternoon glistening in yellow heat, dead dun-brown grass, windless, with all distant things shimmering, grasshoppers, birds dulled to quietness; walking a log road near a cedar swamp looking cool with green darkness and whine of mosquitoes, crow's caw overhead, Cooper's hawk floating singly in mateless haze; walking dumbly, footsore, cutting into evening through sumac and blackberry brambles, onto the lake road, feet sliding in the gravel, whippoorwills, night birds wakening, stumbling to lake shore, shedding clothes on sweet moss; walking into syrupy August moonless dark, water cold, pushing lily pads aside, walking out into the lake with feet springing on mucky bottom until the water flows overhead; sinking again to walk on the bottom then buoyed up, walking on the surface, moving through beds of reeds, snakes and frogs moving, to the far edge of the lake then walking upward over the basswood and alders, the field of sharp stubble and hay bales, toward the woods, floating over the bushy crests of hardwoods and tips of pine, barely touching in miles of rolling heavy dark, coming to the larger water, there walking along the troughs of waves folding in upon themselves; walking to an island, small, narrow, sandy, sparsely wooded, in the middle of the island in a clump of cedars a small spring which I enter, sliding far down into a deep cool dark endless weight of water. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE LAMENT OF QUARRY by LEONIE ADAMS KILLDEER by KENNETH SLADE ALLING THE YOUNG FOWLER THAT MISTOOK HIS GAME by PHILIP AYRES A POEM ABOUT THE HOUNDS AND THE HARES by LISEL MUELLER THE IDEA OF BALANCE IS TO BE FOUND IN HERONS AND LOONS by JAMES HARRISON |
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