knowing that time stops
when heart stops walk off the earth
into the night air
Marching by Jim Harrison
At dawn I heard among birdcalls
the billions of marching feet in the churn
and squeak of gravel, even tiny feet
still wet from the mother’s amniotic fluid,
and very old halting feet, the feet
of the very light and very heavy, all marching
but not together, crisscrossing at every angle
with sincere attempts not to touch, not to bump
into each other, walking in the doors of houses
and out the back door forty years later, finally
knowing that time collapses on a single
plateau where they were all their lives,
knowing that time stops when the heart stops
as they walk off the earth into the night air.
As printed in Jim Harrison: The Complete Poems by Jim Harrison and Copper Canyon Press.
As it says in the preface – or epigram – or prologue or as it is labeled, Editor’s Note:
Poetry, at its best, is the language your soul would speak if you could teach your soul to speak.
Jim Harrison
No Haiku For You 