The Shape of the Journey Quotes

“How can I be alone when these brain cells chat to me their million messages a minute. But sitting there in the ordinary trance that is any mammal’s birthright, say on a desert boulder or northern stump, a riverbank, we can imitate a barrel cactus, a hemlock tree, the water that flows through time as surely as ourselves. The mind loses its distant machine-gun patter, becomes a frog’s occasional croak. A trout’s last jump in the dark, a horned owl’s occasional hoot, or in the desert alone at night the voiceless stars light my primate fingers that I lift up to curl around their bright cosmic bodies.”
― Jim Harrison, The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems

“The present passes too quickly to notice and I’ve never had a grip on the future, even as an idea.”
― Jim Harrison, The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems

“When I was a stray dog in New York City in 1957, trying to eat on a buck a day while walking thousands of blocks in that human forest I thought was enchanted, not wanting to miss anything but missing everything because at nineteen dreams daily burst the brain, dismay the senses, the interior weeping drowning your steps, your mind an underground river running counter to your tentative life. “Our body is a molded river,” said wise Novalis. Bloody brain and heart, also mind and soul finally becoming a single river, flowing in a great circle, flowing from darkness to blessed darkness, still wondering above all else what kind of beast am I?”
― Jim Harrison, The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems

“As a geezer one grows tired of the story of Sisyphus. Let that boulder stay where it is and, by its presence, exactly where it wished to be, but then I’m old enough to have forgotten what the boulder stood for? I think of all of the tons of junk the climbers have left up on Everest, including a few bodies. Even the pyramids, those imitation mountains, say to the gods, “We can do it too.” Despite planes you can’t get off the earth for long. Even the dead meat strays behind, changing shape, the words drift into the twilight across the lake. I’m not bold enough to give a poetry reading while alone far out in the desert to a gathering of saguaro and organ-pipe cactus or listen to my strophes reverberate off a mountain wall. At dawn I sat on a huge boulder near Cave Creek deep in the Chiracahuas and listened to it infer that it didn’t want to go way back up the mountain but liked it near the creek where gravity bought its passage so long ago. Everest told me to get this crap off my head or stay at home and make your own little pyramids.”
― Jim Harrison, The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems

“Try as you might there’s nothing you can do about bird shadows except try to head them off and abruptly stop, letting them pass by in peace. Looking up and down at the very same moment is difficult for a single-eyed man. The ones coming behind you, often cautious crows or ravens, strike hard against the back and nape nerve. Like most of life your wariness is useless. You wobble slightly dumbstruck, queasy, then watch the shadow flit across the brown wind-tormented grass.”
― Jim Harrison, The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems

“was commanded, in a dream naturally, to begin the epitaphs of thirty-three friends without using grand words like love pity pride sacrifice doom honor heaven hell earth: 1. O you deliquescent flower 2. O you always loved long naps 3. O you road-kill Georgia possum 4. O you broken red lightbulb 5. O you mosquito smudge fire 6. O you pitiless girl missing a toe 7. O you big fellow in pale-blue shoes 8. O you poet without a book 9. O you lichen without tree or stone 10. O you lion without a throat 11. O you homeless scholar with dirty feet 12. O you jungle bird without a jungle 13. O you city with a single street 14. O you tiny sun without an earth 15. Forgive me for saying good-night quietly 16. Forgive me for never answering the phone 17. Forgive me for sending too much money 18. Pardon me for fishing during your funeral 19. Forgive me for thinking of your lovely ass 20. Pardon me for burning your last book 21. Forgive me for making love to your widow 22. Pardon me for never mentioning you 23. Forgive me for not knowing where you’re buried 24. O you forgotten famous person 25. O you great singer of banal songs 26. O you shrike in the darkest thicket 27. O you river with too many dams 28. O you orphaned vulture with no meat 29. O you who sucked a shotgun to orgasm 30. Forgive me for raising your ghost so often 31. Forgive me for naming a bird after you 32. Forgive me for keeping a nude photo of you 33. We’ll all see God but not with our eyes”
― Jim Harrison, The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems

“If you dive down deep enough there are no words to bring you up. Not my problem. If you fly too high there are no words to help you land. I went back to my land of bears and learned to bob like an apple on the river’s surface.”
― Jim Harrison, The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems

“A black hole the size of 300 billion stars is gobbling up the M87 galaxy because astronomers gave it a boring name.”
― Jim Harrison, The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems