5.28.2026 – to shoot the wall clock

to shoot the wall clock
make it stop, better yet, keep
backing up slowly

It’s not so comic the way that clocks race themselves with us in fragile tow and it’s not enough to say “What are we waiting for?” or “Why are we holding back?” though that might occur to us later.

We are far less capable of those radical emotional moves advocated by magazines that specialize in puddle-deep psychologisms, the usual seven steps to a victorious emotional life, as if we could put ourselves on a figurative grease rack or automated assembly line for overhaul.

It was all so ordinary though I wanted to shoot the wall clock, over and over. Anything to make it stop or, better yet, keep backing up slowly.

From True North by Jim Harrison (New York, Grove Press, 2004).

I woke from a dream the other morning where all was as it was when I was a kid on the shore of Lake Michigan.

It was a disappointment when I woke and realized it was a dream.

It was all so ordinary though I wanted to shoot the wall clock, over and over.

Anything to make it stop or, better yet, keep backing up slowly.

You can’t can you?

It’s not so comic the way that clocks race themselves with us in fragile tow and it’s not enough to say “What are we waiting for?” or “Why are we holding back?” though that might occur to us later.