5.6.2026 – not here and now but

not here and now but
now and here – a matter of
life, death, ticking watch

Adapted from the collection of poems, After Ikkyū & Other Poems, where Jim Harrison writes:

Not here and now but now and here.
If you don’t know the difference
is a matter of life and death, get down
naked on bare knees in the snow
and study the ticking of your watch.

This collection of poems by Jim Harrison, released in 1996, is deeply influenced by his long-term engagement with Zen practice and is named after the eccentric 15th-century Zen monk Ikkyū Sōjun and was republished in The Complete Poems of Jim Harrison by Jim Harrison (Denver: Copper Canyon Press 2022).

Mr Harrison once wrote, To write a poem you must first create a pen that will write what you want to say. For better or worse, this is the work of a lifetime.

Not here and now

but now and here.

If you don’t know the difference is a matter of life and death,

get down naked on bare knees in the snow …

and study the ticking of your watch.

Not sure OF the difference of here and now or now and here so I am studying the ticking of my watch.

But I wear a watch that winds itself as I walk.

If its ticking I must be walking and if I am walking now I am here now.

For reasons of its own, my watch has stopped.

Now not sure if I am here.