Jim Harrison
By. Ally Rennell
It's easier to breathe while reading Jim Harison.
Kissing the oft-untouched bottom of my lungs are words
like wild cherry, juneberry, thornapple.
This year, I forgot to be enticing, forever.
Topless tanning became merely (sheerly) necessity
as did long walks with no music and stew.
I've given up heavy drinking and dinner parties,
though the latter rather gave up on me, having moved
faraway from friends and familiars.
I'll admit a glass of chilled white is, sometimes,
the only antidote for a grouchy mood, and the distance
brings me closer to myself.
On trash day, my closest neighbor wheels my barrel
out to the street. We've never spoken a word,
but their dogs bark when I get home at night.
Sacred is the arc of every day in my rental-
home made of windows. The sun rises over
the San Juans and sets behind the Sleeping Ute.
This year, winter arrives with a ruddy complexion,
and we meet each other, for the first time, with mutual
offerings-hers, snowfall; mine, juniper to catch it.
How grueling it's been to contort life into one season.
How unnatural, how-unnoticed. Apologies are vain,
so I whisper into the white, Let's be here, now.
She complies, and we walk to the thicket beside
the river. Holding Harrison's memoir against
my body, my true home (his words), I sweep
the high desert in silent thanks.
Cliffrose, dewberry, the quaking aspen.
The sea is a roadtrip away, but I breathe deep
of thin air, and succumb in joyful earnest to stay here,
to care for this land, and let it do the same for me.
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