Poem of the Week, by Jim Harrison

June the Horse

- Jim Harrison

Sleep is water. I'm an old man surging

upriver on the back of my dream horse

that I haven't seen since I was ten.

We're night riders through cities, forests, fields.

I saw Stephanie standing on the steps of Pandora's Box

on Sheridan Square in 1957. She'd never spoken

to me but this time, as a horse lover, she waved.

I saw the sow bear and two cubs. She growled

at me in 1987 when I tried to leave the cabin while her cubs

were playing with my garbage cans. I needed a drink

but I didn't need this big girl on my ass.

We swam up the Neva in St. Petersburg in 1972

where a girl sat on the bank hugging a red icon

and Raskolnikov, pissed off and whining, spat on her feet.

On the Rhône in the Camargue fighting bulls

bellowed at us from a marsh and 10,000 flamingos

took flight for Africa.

This night-riding is the finest thing I do at age seventy-two.

On my birthday evening we'll return to the original

pasture where we met and where she emerged from the pond

draped in lily pads and a coat of green algae.

We were children together and I never expected her return.

One day as a brown boy I shot a wasp nest with bow and arrow,

releasing hell. I mounted her from a stump and without

reins or saddle we rode to a clear lake where the bottom

was covered with my dreams waiting to be born.

One day I'll ride her as a bone-clacking skeleton.

We'll ride to Veracruz and Barcelona, then up to Venus.


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For more information on Jim Harrison, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/jim-harrison

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