Two poems, by two Jims: Harrison and Moore

I ran across these two poems today, both speaking of time and what matters, and I love them and want to keep them around. The first one in particular. My new goal in life is to keep wagging my feet above the abyss.

Bridge

by Jim Harrison (1937–2016)

Most of my life was spent
building a bridge out over the sea
though the sea was too wide.
I’m proud of the bridge
hanging in the pure sea air. Machado
came for a visit and we sat on the
end of the bridge, which was his idea. 

Now that I’m old the work goes slowly.
Ever nearer death, I like it out here
high above the sea bundled
up for the arctic storms of late fall,
the resounding crash and moan of the sea,
the hundred-foot depth of the green troughs.
Sometimes the sea roars and howls like
the animal it is, a continent wide and alive.
What beauty in this the darkest music
over which you can hear the lightest music of human
behavior, the tender connection between men and galaxies. 

So I sit on the edge, wagging my feet above
the abyss. Tonight the moon will be in my lap.
This is my job, to study the universe
from my bridge. I have the sky, the sea, the faint
green streak of Canadian forest on the far shore. 

This is the photo of a young Jim Harrison that accompanied the FB post. It's kind of perfect.

I had not heard of the next poet before today, but I've looked into him a bit and like what I see. In 1975, he was at La Guardia airport when a bomb exploded, killing twelve. He later wrote, "I realized, in the aftermath of the bomb, how arbitrary fate can be. Spending the night in La Guardia in the midst of that chaos, destruction, grief, and hysteria changed the nature of my work. Since then, I have felt that life is much more about the interruption of plot than about plot. What choice did my poetry have, but to reshape itself around these interruptions? I try to see as clearly—even calmly—as I can how things are. Sadness is at the heart of this clarity, but, strangely, consolation as well . . . we are all in it together." The following poem may well inspire me to seek out more of Jim Moore and his work.

The Need Is So Great

by Jim Moore (b. 1943)

Sometimes I just sit like this at the window and watch
the darkness come. If I’m smart, I’ll put on Bach.

I’m thinking now of how far it always seems there is to go.
Maybe it is too easy that I speak so often

of late last light on a December day,
of that stubborn grass that somehow still remains green

behind the broken chain link fence on the corner.
But the need is so great for the way light looks

as it takes its leave of us. We say
what we can to each other of these things,

we who are such thieves, stealing first
one breath and then the next. Bach, keep going

just this slowly, show me the way to believe
that what matters in this world has already happened

and will go on happening forever.
The way light falls on the last

of the stricken leaves of the copper beech
at the end of the block is something to behold.

And, okay, a third, final poem, named by David when I asked what his favorite is—because it fits the overall theme here: of having a mind and a heart and beholding the wonder of it all:

Messenger

by Mary Oliver (1935–2019)

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.